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Joe Mitchell
A backed up storm drain at the corner of Solano and San Pablo avenues was unable to handle the deluge that came down Tuesday morning, forcing water to pour into surrounding businesses. Several of the business suffered substantial water damage as a result of the flood. A

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A champion of Berkeley rent control was ordered last week to pay his former tenants more than $100,000 in restitution by the very rent board he campaigned to create.

By a unanimous vote, the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board found that Michael Berkowitz, a paid aide to Councilmember Maudelle Shirek, had willfully misrepresented his residency status at his 2820 Derby St. property to skirt rent control. Berkowitz also works in a second position as chief of information services and neighborhood planning for the City of San Francisco.

The award reflects the total amount Berkowitz overcharged his tenants each month since 1992.

Asked to comment at a city council meeting several days after the Rent Stabilization Board’s decision, Shirek said she had not heard about the case against her aide.

Berkowitz says he made no intentional attempt to avoid rent control.

“I made a mistake. I thought I was covered, but it was not willful or malicious or anything like that,” he told the rent board. He added in an interview Wednesday he was unsure if he would appeal the decision to the Alameda County Superior Court.

But the fact that the Rent Board dinged Berkowitz for the entire amount of the back rent means that it found his actions intentional. If the Rent Board had found the increases unintentional, the landlord could have been found liable for only three years’ back rent.

The $112,382.40 total award will be held in escrow while all of the former tenants are located.

Berkowitz sold the house after a Rent Board hearing officer initially ruled against him in the matter last October. Last week’s full Rent Board decision was on an appeal from that initial finding.

None of the tenants involved in the complaint chose to comment for this story. All moved out of the house shortly after the hearing examiner’s decision in October.

Berkowitz campaigned for the passage of Berkeley’s rent control ordinance and worked for the rent board briefly in addition to serving on the Zoning Adjustment Board. Rent Board sources said privately that Berkowitz is seen as a trusted ally by the nine-member pro-tenant board, which served as his jury, and that he had close relationships with several board members.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said that if the findings were true, “Such charges would be extremely ironic and perceived by many people to be hypocritical considering [Berkowitz is] a longtime progressive activist who has benefited thousands of tenants by his advocacy.”

Former rent board commissioner Bob Migdal, who served on a landlord majority board, applauded the rent board’s decision. “Hats off to them for not caving into their political buddies,” he said, adding that during his time on the board, the landlord majority found a fellow landlord liable for nearly $100,000 damages.

Berkowitz’ Derby Street tenants filed a complaint against him with the rent board last August when Berkowitz announced he was raising the rent on the five-bedroom house by $375 a month to $3,500—the second large rent increase in two years. The house also has a back cottage.

Rent board records showed that when Berkowitz bought the house in 1992, he removed it from city rent control restrictions by declaring the home as his principal residence. That was a claim that both current and former tenants contested. Berkowitz owned two other Berkeley homes as well.

Berkowitz rented the house in September of 1992 to four tenants, charging them a total of $2,600 a month. In November of that same year, he was notified by the Rent Board that this was almost twice the maximum amount he could charge under Berkeley’s rent control ordinance at the time. A month later, Berkowitz filed a claim that the Derby Street residence was his permanent home, exempting it from rent control.

According to last week’s ruling by the rent board, that was not true.

In an interview with the Daily Planet, Berkowitz said he was “bouncing around” at the time he bought the Derby Street home, but did intend to live there, and resided in the house from June 1994 until November 1995 and from late 1999 until September 2001.

In rent board papers, the tenants confirmed that the landlord used the house during that period, but argued Berkowitz was never a full-time resident.

Rent Board Counsel Brian Kelly acknowledged Berkowitz received mail at the address including bank statements, Dissolution of Marriage papers and a voter registration card, but did not offer copies of his automobile registration, driver’s license or house insurance as he had in 1990 to prove a different address as his principal residence. “If the appellant had, indeed, changed his principal residence…it is reasonable to expect this change would have been reflected…on these documents,” Kelly wrote.

The Berkeley rent board sues between 40-50 landlords a year for not registering their properties and hears about 20 tenant-initiated complaints about landlords not registering with the rent board to avoid rent control.

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Eman Assi, Prof. of Architecture, An-Najah National Univ. Nablus, West Bank, “Destruction of Historical Sites in Nablus and Jenin, Palestine” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.

California Steps for Peace At 4:20 p.m. walk from Berkeley City Hall to People’s Park. Part of a 4-day Peace Walk Across America.

Friends of Willard School Evening of Jazz and Silent Auction at 7 p.m. at the Jazzschool, 2087 Addison. Tickets are $25 available from 845-5373.

Get Out the Vote a pre-primary evening of political music, humor and discussion at Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at 7 p.m.

“The Evolution from Africa” An African American History lesson given through spoken word, music, song, dance and dialogue by the afterschool students and their families at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $1-$3 at the door. All proceeds go directly to the students and staff of the afterschool program.

“Academic Freedom After 9/11” A conference exploring how the Bush administration’s legislation has impacted institutions of higher learning, at 8 a.m. at International House, Piedmont at Bancroft Ave. Sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 642-8208. cmes@uclink.berkeley.edu

“Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War” and “Imagine America” will be shown at 7 p.m. at the Kucinich for President office, 3362 Adeline, near Alcatraz. 420-0772.

“Literacy and Beyond” Celebrate Black History month at the Berkeley YMCA, 2001 Allston Way from 7 to 9 p.m. Books, poetry and art projects. 665-3271.

Bay Area Children First Open House at 5 p.m. at Shattuck Commons, 1400 Shattuck Ave., Suite 7. Auction, foods and crafts. Keynote speakers will include children’s book author and illustrator Thatcher Hurd. 883-9312, ext. 4. www.baychild.org

Literary Friends, “How Women Can Effect Social Change” from 1:15 to 3 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 232-1351.

A Toast to Crew, benefit for the Berkeley Men’s Crew from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the historical Maybeck home of Evelyn Larsen and Bill deCarion. Suggested donation to attend: $35 individual or $50 family. RSVP to Evelyn Larsen erlarsen@arthlink.net

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324.

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231.

SATURDAY, FEB. 28

Mini-Gardeners: Water We'll learn about the water cycle, give our plants a drink, and make watering cans to take home. For ages 4 to 6. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park Cost is $3. Registration required. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org

Creating Your Garden Paradise with Aerin Moore. We will provide you with tools for using the elements of design to make your garden your personal expression of creativity. At 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351.

Saturday Night Sing-Along An evening of campfire classics, silly and serious songs, rounds and movement activities at 7 p.m. at 1216 Solano Ave. at Talbot. Appropriate for all ages. Cost is $3 for adults, $2 for children. Sponsored by the Albany YMCA. 525-1130.

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Disaster Mental Health for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Fire Department Training Center, 997 Cedar St. Register on-line at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506.

Wine Tasting Benefit for Walden School at 7 p.m. at METRO Lighting & Crafts, 2121 San Pablo Ave. Tickets are $35 available from 841-7248, and at the door.

Get Out the Vote for Kucinich Meet at 10 a.m. at 3362 Adeline for music and precinct walking. 333-7307.

Home Buying Process Workshop offered by the Unity Council, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1900 Fruitvale Ave. Oakland. This comprehensive workshop will cover all the elements involved in the home buying process, from establishing a budget, how to improve credit, buying power, working with realtors and the approval at the lender’s level. The workshop is free, but registration is requested. 535-6943.

“How to Buy a Home on a Limited Budget” a fee seminar providing unbiased advice for first-time buyers who aren’t sure if they can afford to buy in the Berkeley area. Held at 180B 4th St. For reservations call 540-7808.

“The Gifts of Grief” an educational documentary about the transformational power of loss at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Donation $20. 547-5004. www.giftsofgrief.com

California College of the Arts Open House Prospective students can tour studios, meet faculty, and view student work. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 5212 Broadway, Oakland. 594-3712.

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800.

SUNDAY, FEB. 29

Early Morning Birdwalk at Tilden Nature Area at 8 a.m. Once every four years we get to go birding on this day. Every new bird you see counts double for your life bird list. 525-2233.

Leap Year at Tilden Nature Area. Learn about the history of Leap Day, with calendar customs and folklore from around the world. From 2 to 4 p.m. 525-2233.

Save The Bay is seeking volunteers who are passionate about the environment and have some paddling experience in canoes and/or sea kayaks to be volunteer guides for our on-the-water outings program, Discover The Bay. From 10a.m. to 3 p.m. Free. For more information, contact Jessica Parsons, Outings Coordinator, at 452-9261, or jparsons@savesfbay.org

Fred Lupke: A Celebration of His Life and Work from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Community Room, Third Floor, Main Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck.

“Patriots Act: Fighting the Good Fight - The Next Generation” Annual Reunion of The Veterans & Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at 1 p.m. at Calvin Simmons Theater, 10 Tenth St. Oakland. Speakers include Peter Glazer, Medea Benjamin, Bruce Barthol and members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Tickets are $30, and are available from 548-3088 or at the door. Proceeds will go to MoveOn.org

Neighborhood Watch Monthly Meeting at the Public Safety Building, 2100 MLK, Jr. Way from 6:30 to 8 p.m. (Late comers enter through jail door.) Block Captains are especially invited but anyone interested in starting a neighborhood program is welcome. Refreshments will be served. Sponsored by the Berkeley Safe Neighborhoods Committee (BSNC). For more information please call BPD Community Services Bureau at 981-5808.

“Regional Transportation 101” a presentation sponsored by Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation, a 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Main Library, Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 652-9462.

National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. the first Monday of each month at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. 287-8948.

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthing at 1:15 p.m. every Monday at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170.

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425.

TUESDAY, MARCH 2

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.

National Nutrition Month “Eat in Season” from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK. Cooking demonstrations, recipes and nutrition education. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org

“Wildflowers of the East Bay” with Glenn Keator on Tuesdays to March 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost for the program is $145, $125 for members. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu

“Kayaking With Whales Off Vancouver Island” a slide presentation with whale research biologist David Briggs at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140.

“Minorities in Israel” with Prof. Zeidan Atashi, an Israeli Druz Arab at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Sponsored by Bridges to Israel.

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. The Writing Class will read from thier recent works at 11 a.m. 845-6830.

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 234-4783. www.berkeleycameraclub.org

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3

Great Decisions 2004: “U.S. and Europe” with Prof. Anthony Adamthwaite, History Dept., UCB, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. Briefing booklets are available. For information and reservations call 526-2925.

Refuse and Resist presents a documentary film, “A Life Matters: The Story of an Illegal Abortionist” at 6 p.m. at Rockridge Branch Library, 5366 College Ave. Donations welcome. 704-5293.

Post-Primary Meet-up for Howard Dean Join supporters of Howard Dean to discuss next steps in this grassroots campaign to take back our country. At 7 p.m. at Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. and Sweet Basil Thai Restaurant, 1736 Solano Ave. For more information contact East Bay for Dean at 267-3796.

Northbrae Community Church Monthly Dinner, with a presentation on Alaska by the Berkeley Camera Club, at 6 p.m. at 941 The Alameda. Dinner cost is $7.50 for adults, $3.50 for children. For reservations call 526-3805.

Fun with Acting class meets at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome. 985-0373.

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164.

THURSDAY, MARCH 4

“Travel to Cuba” a discussion with Fred Burkes, the interpreter and journalist who is challenging the Cuba travel ban, at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. Sponsored by the Berkeley-Palma Soriano Sister City Association. 644-9260.

Writers’ Room Coach Training is offered from 7 to 9:30 p.m. for volunteers who would like to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. To attend please call Terry Bloomburgh at 849-4134 or email Bloomburgh@sbcglobal.net

“Cidade de Deus/City of God,” the housing project in Rio de Janeiro, with Paulo Lins at 4 p.m. at Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Campus. sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088.

Host an International Student Let Europe come to you this summer. SWIFT Student Exchange program is bringing Spanish and French middle and high school students to the Bay Area for 3-4 week stays with Bay Area families. Informational evening, from 6-8 p.m. at the SWIFT office in Oakland. Call 433-0414 for directions and more information.

Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM holds public meetings for all interested people first and third Thursdays, 7 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 595-0190.

ONGOING

Family Activist Resource Center A small group of East Bay parents is meeting monthly to set up a drop-in center where parents and caregivers can come with their children and do their political work while their children are cared for in a creative, respectful and nurturing manner. For information on the next meeting, contact Erica at ericadavid@earthlink.net or call 841-3204.

Free Income Tax Help is available on Tuesday mornings between 10 a.m. and 12 noon at St. John's Presbyterian Church Prime Timers, 2727 College Ave., Berkeley. Ozzie Olson, AARP trained tax preparer is available by appointment. 845-6830.

Auditions for Showtime at the Apollo will be held Sat. March 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Whether you’re part of a gospel group, a chorus line, a barbershop quartet, or a jazz ensemble; if you’re a magician, a female impersonator or a one-man band; if you’ve dreamed of thousands applauding your talent at the piano, tuba or didgeridoo, you’ll have your shot at the “Big Time.” Amateur performers and groups wishing to audition may call Laura Abrams at 642-0212 or e-mail apollo@calperfs.berkeley.edu to receive an audition application and to schedule an audition.

Starbucks Grants for Giving is offering $375,000 to local non-profits in Berkeley and other East Bay cities. Eligibility and application information can be obtained from any Northern California Starbucks location, by visiting www.starbucks.com/

Thank you for giving generous space to outstanding questions regarding the future of the historic Blood House. I regret failing to acknowledge the contributions made by Daniella Thompson to the opinion piece under my name.

Lesley Emmington Jones

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NOT JUST A BAND-AID

Editors, Daily Planet:

Proposition 56 is the beginning of real reform of state budget making. The state budget has been late 17 of the last 25 years while special loopholes or expenditures are included to buy the hold-out votes needed to reach a two-thirds majority. We cannot afford being held hostage by a minority.

Since Prop. 13, the state has exercised control over local revenues. When the budget is late every local government and agency is also in limbo, often handing out pink slips while they try to guess what resources will return to them from the state. We cannot afford this uncertainty at all levels of government.

Prop. 56 will move us towards majority rule and focus legislators completing the budget before the deadline (or no pay). Prop. 56 will provide for building up five percent reserves during times of surplus. Prop. 56 gives voters access to information on state expenditures and voting records at election time and discourages partisan intimidation of centrist legislators.

Prop. 56 is a reform assembled with care by organizations interested in good government, not a last minute Band-Aid. Proposition 56 deserves our vote.

Eva Alexis, President,

League of Women Voters of the Bay Area

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DEANIACS FOR EDWARDS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Howard Dean has re-energized the Democratic party by revolutionizing fundraising, starting the process of meaningfully criticizing the president, and bringing in hordes of passionate citizens new to the political process. After his recent withdrawal from the race, Dean’s supporters may be looking for a new candidate to carry on their cause. That candidate is Sen. John Edwards.

Senator Edwards opposed NAFTA (which Sen. Kerry voted for) and is strongly pro-union. Like Dean, he regularly talks about ending poverty, having health care for all children, creating new jobs in the bleeding manufacturing sector, and healing racial divides. And very much unlike Dean, Sen. Edwards’ main rival John Kerry has taken more money from lobbyists than anyone else in the Senate during the past 15 years. The Nation magazine gave many more reasons why “Progressives Should Vote Edwards” in a recent article.

For most progressives, this election is about defeating George Bush. Exit polls from the open primaries so far show that Edwards has a strong lead over Sen. Kerry amongst Independents and conservative-leaning voters, and those who chose their candidate based on the issues. This means he will be the most electable candidate against Bush in the swing states in the Midwest and South. Perhaps this is why most of the Cal Berkeley Democrats who previously followed Dean now support Edwards, and why Dean himself said recently that Sen. Edwards was a stronger candidate than Sen. Kerry. On March 2, the real test of electability will lie with the voters of California.

Samit Dasgupta

UC Berkeley Students for Edwards

•

WEST BERKELEY

Editors, Daily Planet:

Back in the July 8-10, 2003 edition of the Berkeley Daily Planet you published my letter regarding how “the City of Berkeley has treated our West Berkeley neighborhood irresponsibly, leaving us seriously jeopardized in a number of respects—including the fact that “there are no stop signs or crosswalks for us to access Strawberry Creek Park from the south side of Bancroft Way— we are forced to wait or stop traffic ourselves in order to cross the street.” This letter represented the tip of the iceberg in terms of my numerous complaints to the City of Berkeley, pleas that consistently fell on deaf ears.

My complaints to the city pointed out there are several blocks on Bancroft Way between Acton Street and Browning Street without stop signs or crosswalks: Trucks and cars use this stretch at speeds totally unacceptable in a residential neighborhood. There is no safe crossing from the Berkeley Youth Alternatives Organic Garden to the Strawberry Creek recreation area on the opposite side of the street, putting us and our three children in jeopardy on an almost daily basis. I consider it imperative to install stop signs and crosswalks, especially at West Street and Bancroft Way, and also at Bonar Street and Bancroft Way.

What if the city had responsibly addressed this issue of unsafe traffic conditions in a residential and recreational neighborhood? What if the city had not been negligent, in other words? Perhaps the tragic death of Miguel Caicedo could have been prevented.

Muni Schweig

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OVERDUE STOP SIGN

Editors, Daily Planet:

About 20 years ago we asked that the stop sign at Acton Street and Allston Way be changed from two-way to four-way, citing many minor accidents and near misses. A city staffer told us there were “too few accidents to justify our request.” Many years later, a city employee was injured when his city vehicle was broadsided at the intersection. We finally got the stop sign.

We, the Corporation Yard Neighbors, requested a stop sign at “Bancroft/West/Strawberry Creek entrance” in a list of mitigations we asked for in July, 2003. From the long list, so far we have seen only one item done: planting of trees along Allston Way city employee parking lot.

Bancroft Way has no stop signs for a three-block length between Acton and Browning streets. Perhaps after this tragic accident someone will believe our contention that Bancroft Way and Allston Way are dangerous.

Toni Horodysky

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CITY CAN SAVE LIVES

Editors, Daily Planet:

One split second and the lives of two families are devastated. One family loses a son and another man bears the heavy burden of having been the driver of the vehicle. Could this awful accident have been avoided?

As reported in your Feb. 24-26 issue, Miguel Caicedo was hit and killed Friday, Feb. 20 on Bancroft Way as he came out of the exit from Strawberry Creek Park. The residents of this neighborhood have been begging the City of Berkeley to install a stop sign along this stretch of road, specifically at Bancroft Way and West Street. I live at that intersection. I hear cars zooming down the street all the time. It is so bad that, when I am outside, I sometimes yell at drivers to slow down. Even if the driver who hit Miguel was not speeding, had there been a stop sign, perhaps he would have been going slowly enough and had enough reaction time to avoid the accident.

Now that someone has died, will the City of Berkeley please install a stop sign at Bancroft Way and West Street?

Patricia Jones

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ENFORCE THE LAW

Editors, Daily Planet:

I read the article about the go-cart accident and it seems to miss the obvious.

A few of the bystanders who are residents told me that the kid(s) had been driving the go-cart on the streets for a while (not just the day of the accident), and that the police had been present and not said anything about it. I do think the officers who saw kids operating a go-cart on the street should have stopped them. Go-carts are not street-legal. I was walking my dog at the park that day and I saw a kid driving a go-cart around on the streets and thought it extremely dangerous. A few minutes later I heard the accident and thought, “I hope that wasn’t the kid.” It was.

If the police had stopped the go-cart activity they could have saved a life—something for the common good.

Whether of not the police have been harassing the teens seems a separate issue, albeit important. The amount of court time spent on obstruction of justice and resisting arrest charges, and the obvious waste of shrinking revenue, is a travesty deserving of its own story.

Opponents include many environmentalists dismayed by the measure’s wasteful and, in some respects, destructive expenditure plan. A prominent example is San Francisco BART director Tom Radulovich, who may be the BART board’s “greenest” voice.

Measure 2’s real advocate is its author, State Senator Don Perata. Perata has long sought to subsidize costly and polluting diesel ferries, as advocated by a key backer of his—whose core business happens to be developing major waterfront properties. This is why Measure 2 would waste fully 21 percent of its (our) funds on those wasteful ferries, whose few riders should pay their full costs.

The Yes on 2 campaign is as tainted as the measure itself. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in two recent front-page articles (Feb. 17 and 19) how Perata has earmarked $22,000 in Yes on 2 donations—and $291,000 in donations to other Perata initiatives, many from large corporate donors—for an old friend of his. Perata’s friend has, in turn, paid Perata some $100,000 a year in “consulting fees.” This closed-circle arrangement looks enough like influence peddling that the state Senate is conducting an ethics investigation of Perata.

Then there’s the unwelcome Caldecott Tunnel fourth bore, toward which Measure 2 allocates $50 million. Stuart (like Chris Douglas’ Feb. 24 letter) downplays its impact. But a widened tunnel would encourage more East County commuters to abandon BART and instead drive to Berkeley. That would surely mean more cars on our streets—particularly on already choked access corridors like Tunnel Road, Ashby Avenue, and College Avenue.

I’m disappointed that my old friend Stuart Cohen has chosen to make deals with perhaps the sleaziest legislator in Sacramento. While Stuart has certainly negotiated some good projects into Measure 2, he now feels obligated to defend a rotten overall package.

Voters, however, are free to strike a blow for clean, transparent government by rejecting Measure 2. There’s no environmental downside to this. Regional officials can always enact a better toll-hike measure—or better still, propose a regional gas tax—that funds real transit needs, with no 21 percent ferry commission off the top for Perata and his ferry godfather.

The Peralta Community College District and the City of Berkeley have reached a settlement on parking mitigations owed to the city by Peralta, giving the district the green light to start construction on its new downtown Vista College campus.

Peralta, which counts Vista among its four member schools, will pay the city $3.6 million to offset the expected parking crunch of putting the six-story, 165,000-square-foot building at the 2050 Center St. location where a 54-space parking lot once sat.

Construction had originally been scheduled to start two weeks ago, but was blocked after the city denied construction permits to close off parts of Center Street.

Two years after former City Manager Weldon Rucker proposed the $3.6 million as the mitigation fee in a letter to Peralta, current City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Mayor Tom Bates tried to reopen negotiations with the college district two months ago with a figure of $6 million.

Though Bates insisted the Rucker letter was not legally binding, he added that he didn’t want to hold up construction any further on the project. The estimated completion date has already been pushed back from August, 2005 to January, 2006.

“Weldon wrote an unfortunate letter,” Bates said. “We’ve been upset about that and have wanted to negotiate, but the project is an important asset to the community and we want this to go forward.”

Vista did meet one city demand, agreeing to safeguard the money in an escrow account. Berkeley officials were concerned that the mitigation money, which is earmarked from 2002’s Measure E, could dry up if construction costs exceeded estimates.

With the parking permits in hand, Vista President John Garmon expected construction to begin immediately. He added that a published report of Vista losing $2,500 a day in contractor fees during the stalemate was false, since the penalty would only have applied had construction already began and was then halted.

Bates said the mitigation money would be spent on improving downtown transportation. A portion will go towards the estimated $18 million reconstruction and expansion of the 420-space Center Street garage and the rest to fund transportation alternatives to driving.l

As someone who has lived in Berkeley for 29 years, I am annoyed by the continuing manipulation of our local electoral system. Berkeley ballot measures in recent years have changed the election date, replaced at-large city council elections with district elections, changed the vote total needed to win from 50 percent to 45 percent, and changed council terms from four years to two years and back to four years again. But of all these changes, the Instant Runoff Voting proposal—Measure I on the ballot, is the most sinister and anti-democratic.

Under Measure I, voters would select their second choice as well as their first choice for an office. If no one got a majority, a candidate’s votes for second choice would then be counted, in an as yet undetermined way. Thus, someone who did not get the most votes for mayor or city council could still be declared the winner, based on the number of their second choice votes. Do we really want a replay of the 2000 presidential election, with the losing candidate being declared the winner? Just imagine the outrage that the supporters of the candidate with the most first place votes will feel when another candidate is awarded the office.

Making matters worse, the controversial Diebold Voting Machines would be tallying the second choice votes and determining the winner, based on a secret proprietary software program, and most likely with no paper trail.

What if the candidates for mayor were Tom Bates, Shirley Dean, and a well-funded Nazi sympathizer? Would Tom Bates’s supporters vote for Shirley

Dean as their second choice, thus decreasing the Nazi sympathizer’s chances of winning but increasing Dean’s chances? Or would they bullet vote for Bates, thus decreasing Dean’s chances, but increasing the chances a Nazi sympathizer could become the mayor of Berkeley? And would Dean’s supporters vote for Bates as their second choice, and risk Bates being elected? Or would they bullet vote for Dean, increasing the Nazi sympathizer’s chances of winning?

The reality is that with Instant Runoff voting, whenever two or more candidates have roughly the same level of support, the candidate whose supporters are the least civic-minded will be elected. A civic-minded voter would risk their preferred candidate losing so as to keep an extremist or a clearly unqualified candidate from gaining office. But a hardball, partisan Berkeley voter would bullet vote for their candidate to increase his or her chances, even if it meant increasing an extremist candidate’s chances as well.

What is so disingenuous about the most vocal proponents of Instant Runoff Voting is that they are the folks most likely to bullet vote for their preferred candidate—to maximize their candidate’s chances of being declared the winner, while not even making a second choice vote. They want Berkeley’s more naïve and civic minded voters to make a second place choice, even though they probably would have no intention of doing so themselves.

I also urge Berkeley voters to oppose Measure H, which would lower the plurality needed for election (in the interim before Instant Runoff Voting took effect) from 45 percent to 40 percent. Forty percent is simply too low to elect someone. A controversial candidate fiercely opposed by 60 percent of the electorate could still be elected if there were two or more other people on the ballot. If a 40 percent rule had been in effect in San Francisco last fall, there would have been no runoff election between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzales, a runoff which Gonzales almost won. It is regrettable that no one wrote an argument against Measure H for the ballot handbook. However, Berkeley voters should be aware that both the Green Party and the Bay Guardian oppose Measure H.

I don’t understand the Berkeley left’s paranoia of the occasional runoff election. Progressive candidates in Berkeley do no worse in runoff elections than in general elections. If Berkeley’s left insiders really wanted to make it easier to vote, and really wanted to increase voter turnout, they could switch elections to the spring, when the sun sets later and it’s unlikely to be raining. And they could have local elections be held on Sundays, as in done in most countries, when people do not have to work and thus have more time to vote. In the mean time, lets keep our present rational voting system, in which the candidate with the most votes wins. I urge Berkeley residents to take the advise of both Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek and City Councilmember Betty Olds and vote against Measure I.

Clifford Fred was a member of the Berkeley Planning Commission from 1988 to 1996.

Despite misgivings by several commissioners, Berkeley’s Civic Arts Commission voted 6-3 Wednesday night to endorse a major Seagate Properties project for downtown Berkeley. If it eventually passes full city approval, the 149-apartment, mixed-use complex would replace four Center Street buildings between the City Center Garage and the Wells Fargo Annex.

The proposed project next goes to the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board’s Design Review Committee to look at recent plan revisions, and then, on April 7, to the full ZAB for consideration.

Though architect Darrell de Tienne and city staff have been hammering out details of the project for 32 months, the arts commissioners only got a look at project specifications two days before Wednesday night’s meeting—a point that clearly rankled.

Commissioners Jos Sances and Bonnie Hughes, who voted against the project, lamented both the project’s late arrival and the proposed control of the project’s 9000-square-foot performance area by the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Hughes also mourned the absence of a downtown performance space that could accommodate a grand piano.

Chair David Snippen, while voting to endorse the project, said he was also concerned that the proposal came so late to the commission which is supposed to oversee the city’s public arts.

Thursday morning, City Economic Development Project Coordinator Ted Burton acknowledged the commission’s complaints about the lateness of their look at the proposal.

Burton said, “It’s true they only just got it, but until the city staff report was finalized, we couldn’t take it to the commissions, and technical issues had held it up until now.”

The commission vote followed an outburst from the otherwise tranquil de Tienne after listening to commissioners’ concerns and raise the possibility of a delayed vote.

“For three-and-a-half years, no one but Berkeley Rep came to me and said we want to do a deal. . .It’s a great project,” the architect said, citing praises from Mayor Tom Bates. “I’ve been playing by the rules, and I’m trying to do the best goddamn job I can do...If you want to rethink, I’ll take it directly to the city council.” De Etienne added that if ground wasn’t broken within six months, the project “will go away.”

Seagate developers of San Rafael are asking to build the nine-storey, 186,000 square-foot project a full four stories over Berkeley’s General Plan restrictions by qualifying for the additional height under city and state “density bonus” laws.

Two floors and a half-sized ninth floor came from the state’s inclusionary housing bonus, which allows substantial square footage to developers that include housing for low-income tenants. Low-income in Berkeley is defined as $55,850 for a family of three.

The other two extra floors came from Berkeley’s “arts density bonus,” which confers additional size on projects that dedicate permanent space to public arts. Because two of the existing buildings presently house rehearsal facilities of the Berkeley Rep, Seagate has signed a 20-year lease with theater group for the specially designed performance space.

Under their lease with Seagate, Berkeley Rep is obligated to make the space available to other civic performance groups 52 days a year, and Susan Medak, the troupe’s managing director, told the Civic Arts Commission they have committed to 100 days a year.

Medak acknowledged that the space doesn’t lend itself to live music.

All the commissioners agreed that the architect’s scale model was a thing of beauty. But to a more cynical eye, it was hard to see how they could think otherwise. The model was light, airy, and—because no inconvenient walls or floors filled the inside, transparent through plastic windows set between carefully crafted strips of balsa wood.

While several commissioners had expressed disappointment at the lack of an art gallery on the Center Street frontage—something de Etienne had included in his original design—Burton said the General Plan calls for retail frontage. “We want to get people shopping downtown,” he said.

Project developer Seagate is a privately held five-member partnership with extensive real estate holdings in the Bay Area and apartments in Colorado. Berkeley holdings listed on their website include the 12-storey building at 2149 Shattuck Ave., site of their local office, and structures at 1950 and 2039-2040 Addison St., 2055 Center St., and 1918 and 1936 University Ave.

While no dollar figures for the new building were offered Wednesday night, one knowledgeable source told the Daily Planet that conventional building costs of $150 to $200 per square foot would place the value of the proposed Center Street building at $2.8 to $3.7 million.

Passage of Propositions 57 and 58 will allow the governor to cut needed services now and in the foreseeable future. Former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean (“Propositions 57 and 58 Are a Necessary First Step,” Daily Planet, Feb. 24-26) states that the $15 billion in bonds will be paid back over 9-14 years from one quarter of a cent from state sales tax. This money is part of the General Fund and therefore will take away more money from education, health and other social ser vices.

The $15 billion bond is also a one-time increase in revenue, while an increase in a tax is an ongoing affair. So her argument that raising taxes will raise only $7 billion dollars is false. It will raise $7 billion dollars every year that the incr eases will be in effect and will not increase the amount the state spends each year since there will be no added interest expense to pay back over a period of 9-14 years.

The only long or short term answer to the deficit is to raise taxes. If the economy does in fact improve so there is a surplus again, any tax increase imposed now can be reduced as it was when the maximum tax rate on high-income taxpayers was reduced from 11 percent to 9.3 percent and when the tax on motor vehicles was reduced by Gov. Gray Davis.

Passing Propositions 57 and 58 will allow the governor to further cut education, health and social services because the $15 billion will not lower the deficit in future years. In fact, because of added interest costs incurred the deficit will continue to exist.

If 57 and 58 are defeated the Legislature and the governor will have to sit down and compromise, which means all of the following: raising taxes, making some cuts and maybe borrow some money.

Shirley Dean’s analogy of an ordinary citi zen who lives beyond his means and gets into “wrenching debt” is in error. An individual cannot raise taxes. The governor and Legislature can and must do so. The ordinary citizen would not let his children go to inferior schools and refuse medical care fo r his family when he has another way to solve his financial problems.

Shirley Dean states that Prop. 58 requires that the state set up a reserve using 1-3 percent of the state’s General Fund revenues until the reserves reaches $8 billion. Where does she think this money is going to come from? Since she does not advocate an immediate tax hike, it will only come again from funds that should be going to education, health and social services.

I keep hearing from the governor that we are in hard times and e veryone must feel the hurt. But why is it the rich are the only ones who do not have to suffer? With the federal tax reductions and the elimination of the vehicle tax (the more expensive the auto the more you pay), they have received enough tax benefits f or them to payback a little to the State of California in this time of fiscal emergency.

Lawrence H. Gordon

•

DON’T BE DECEIVED

Editors, Daily Planet:

Shirley Dean, while acknowledging that Propositions 57 and 58 “will not solve our budget woes,” urges us to approve these two measures as the only “practical, responsible, effective thing to do right now.”

Is it in the best interests of low- and middle-income Californians to shoulder the burden of repaying what is essentially a credit-card debt of a $15 billion bond over the next 15 years? Add to this figure billions more in interest, as Republican Senator McClintock has stated in his opposition to these measures.

Is there no alternative? State Treasurer Phil Angelides has recently proposed an alterna tive plan to deal with the deficit over a three-year period. It would use a quarter-cent of the state’s existing sales tax, plus a temporary return to the 10 percent and 11 percent graduated tax brackets for Californians earning more than $140,000 ($280,0 0 for married couples). Prior to 1996, these tax brackets existed during the Reagan and Wilson years.

Unfortunately, the only ads we see on TV are those of Gov. Schwarzenegger, whose fund-raisers in New York and elsewhere are helping to pay for his mult i-million dollar campaign to sell us Propositions 57 and 58. Don’t be deceived. Vote no on both measures.

Josephine Arasteh

•

GREEN OPPOSITION

Editors, Daily Planet:

The Alameda County Green Party is opposed to Propositions 57 and 58.

This $15 billion hole that we have dug for ourselves is a very big one, over 20 percent of the annual budget. But California already has billions of dollars in debt, which along with our unwillingness to tax ourselves has cost us the lowest credit rating of any state. L ong term bonds are supposed to be used for schools, parks, etc. Some would cut important social programs that they see as waste and we see as important.

Our solution involves necessary increases in taxes and fees. The governor rescinded the vehicle licen se fee, which added $4 billion to the deficit. This so-called “car tax” is really a fee for use of the roads and the air which vehicles pollute. It was two percent until 1998 when it was reduced. The 2003 increase by Gov. Davis was only restoring it. Because of the environmental damage that cars cause, we would increase it above 1998 levels, though we would make it progressive, charging more for larger, more expensive cars. The governor is raising the "fees" for students and park access, etc., instead of the “fees” for cars. Are cars more important than students!?!?

We would also increase the income tax on wealthier Californians. The poorest fifth of the state’s non-elderly families, with an average income of $11,100, paid 11.3 percent of their income in state taxes in 2002 (including the sales tax), however the wealthiest one percent, with an average income of $1.6 million, paid only 7.2 percent.

Our solution also involves cutting “waste.” We would start by reducing management executive salaries and pe rks, including the Legislature’s budget and the governor’s office budget. We would reduce the number of high-paid commission positions that are used to reward friends of legislators or former legislators. Having reduced executive salaries, we would be i n a better position to go the employee unions to ask them to help in some way, especially prison employee unions, which received exorbitant increases under Gov. Davis, in return for over $3 million in campaign contributions. Also we would reduce the numbe r of employees by attrition and not by reducing important services, but by using employee time more efficiently.

If this bond is defeated, the pain of the high rates on short-term borrowing would motivate quicker resolution of the problem. If Wall Street saw us making large changes in our taxes and spending to do our share, they would likely lend short term money which will be needed while we find and make the changes.

Prop. 58 is appealing. We want the state to live within its means. However, we fear t hat it would be used to reduce the ability of state government to fund education, health, mass transportation, etc. Far better to enact a fair taxation system, taxing those who can afford it the most. Far better that motor vehicles, especially SUVs, pay t heir true costs to society with higher gas taxes. Please vote no on 57 and 58.

In what has become a school ritual almost as common as an afternoon assembly, students at Berkeley’s Malcolm X Elementary headed for dry ground upstairs after Wednesday’s torrential downpour flooded their classrooms for the second time in two months.

Teachers at the school said that water started hurdling sandbags stacked outside Malcolm X at approximately 9:30 a.m., covering six kindergarten and first grade classrooms ankle-deep in water. Four multi-use classrooms housing the after-school program were also flooded, as were the school’s gym and auditorium.

Neighbors of the school located at Ellis Street and Ashby Avenue said Ellis was “a river” with three-foot high tides of water racing downhill towards the school.

No students or faculty were injured. Students were taken upstairs, while teachers, parents and older students sought to salvage supplies and sweep water from rooms.

The kindergarten and first graders had only returned to their classrooms three weeks ago after a Dec. 28 storm caused similar damage, and kept students in makeshift accommodations.

Malcolm X has a history of minor flooding, said Principal Cheryl Chinn, but the school had not seen flooding of such magnitude until this year. She added that she would hesitate to return students to their regular classrooms until the district has identified and fixed the cause of the flood. The auditorium and gym, however, should be serviceable by next week, she said.

The district spent $100,000 repairing damage from the December flood, but has still not determined its cause. Maintenance Director Rhonda Bacot said a civil engineer was scheduled to visit the school Wednesday, the day of the second deluge.

Parents and union officials were both furious the district failed to prevent a second inundation. “Heads should roll,” said Berkeley Federation of Teacher’s President Barry Fike, adding that he had e-mailed the district five times requesting detailed information and an investigation report on the December flood, but had received inadequate replies. “This shows an absolute lack of responsibility by the district. The cause [of the flood] should have been the first thing they looked at.”

Catherine Lazio, a Malcolm X PTA member said she was “frustrated with the district’s response to prevention. Why am I having bake sales when the district is allowing these expensive mistakes to happen twice?” she asked.

Pending completion of insurance claims, officials were unsure of the ultimate cost of the two floods to the district.

Superintendent Michele Lawrence defended her staff, saying their top priority was to return students and teachers to classrooms. Bacot said the district had done the best it could to prepare the school for Wednesday’s storm. Maintenance staff cleaned storm drains and stacked sandbags, but “there was just more water than the drains could handle,” she said.

The cause of the two recent South Berkeley floods remains a mystery. Renee Cardinaux, Berkeley director of Public Works, said his crews were investigating Wednesday’s overflow, but that an investigation into the December flood at Malcolm X cleared the city of any responsibility. “The water was building up in the school even before the streets were flooded,” he said. “We may have added to the severity, but I don’t think we caused it.”

He added that if the pending investigation finds the city culpable for Wednesday’s flood at the school, the city would have to come up with the money to compensate for the damages.

Teachers credited students with an orderly retreat from their classrooms Wednesday morning. Kindergarten teacher Hazelle Fortich was using the storm as a spring board to teach the water cycle, when water started racing through the door. “I was explaining how rivers flow into oceans when I looked down and said ‘Kindergardeners, we need to get upstairs.’” Five minutes later, she said, the water was ankle-deep.

The six classes will return to the same multi-purpose rooms they occupied during the last cleanup. Cynthia Allman will teach her kindergarten class in a section of the drama room with a sliding door between her students and the young thespians. “They’re going to be a little discombobulated for a few days, but we’ll reestablish our routines,” she said.

At a Wednesday night Berkeley School Board meeting this week, with Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters sitting beside board members, district brass pledged to tackle one of their most foul problems—bad food.

The district that is periodically mistakenly lauded for a long-defunct program to include organic vegetables in school lunches actually serves most of its students prepackaged, airplane style meals, if it offers anything at all, and it’s losing a bundle doing it.

The cafeteria fund is roughly $600,000 in debt. Though district officials say $460,000 of that is caused by the loss of a general fund subsidy, food service deficits have cost the district’s general fund roughly $1.1 million during the past three years—all that in the midst a budget crisis that has resulted in layoffs and increased class sizes.

“Everyone agrees the food is terrible,” said Eric Weaver, chair of the district’s Child Nutrition Advisory Committee. “That’s not the issue, but the question is how do you fix it when everyone is broke.”

Wednesday night the district laid out a vision of Berkeley students munching on fresh, locally grown produce but offered few details how the district could pay for it.

Superintendent Michele Lawrence called for a school lunch curriculum in which nutrition and food are integrated into every Berkeley school. She gave examples that included elementary students learning about carbohydrates in the lunchroom and high school students reading Fast Food Nation in English class.

Then there’s the food. The district wants to replace prepackaged, re-heated food with fresh fare cooked on-site, but officials acknowledge that under present circumstances such a shift would push food and staff costs even higher.

The strategy, district officials say, will be to win funding from foundations and government agencies to cover the added costs. Zenobia Barlow of the Center for Ecoliteracy, which has partnered with the school district on other nutrition programs, presented board members with over a dozen foundations that provide nutrition grants, and said she was confident the money could be found.

District officials cautioned that when it came to reforming food service, they had no definitive plan, no clear funding and no estimate of how much money was required.

“We’re not certain yet how this is going to play out,” Lawrence told the board.

If Berkeley succeeds, officials said it would be the first district to free itself from the mass produced food cycle forced on districts by stingy federal and state school lunch programs that act as subsidies for large corporate food processors to provide food that offers little flavor or nutritional value.

Karen Candito, the district’s director of nutrition services, said the current system gave Berkeley no alternative to the cheapest options. The district receives $2.32 for every student who qualifies for the free and reduced lunch program. Of that, Candito explained, the majority goes to labor and operational costs. That leaves only 17 cents for milk, 15 cents for fruit and 15 cents for vegetables.

Insufficient funding has meant few takers at school cafeterias, Weaver said. “Right now the only kids eating the lunch are the ones who get it for free.”

Weaver and other parents have pushed for better food in the district for years, arguing that attractive meals were the only way to get students to buy the school lunch and plug the budget deficit.

Candito, though, said her calculations showed that even if every child in the district ate a freshly prepared school lunch, the cafeteria fund would still be in the red. She said high labor costs and cost inefficiencies of operating 11 small, 200-student elementary schools made on-site preparation of fresh food unfeasible without aid.

“To go from producing 200 meals to four hundred meals wouldn’t cost much more, but the revenue would double,” she said. She added that any funding for fresh food must be sustainable, pointing to the organic vegetable program, sponsored by Chez Panisse, that collapsed after seed funding ran out.

The push to remake school meals comes as the district faces a turning point in food services. This fall, the high school food court comes on-line offering freshly prepared food to students accustomed to lunching at Shattuck Avenue restaurants.

In 2005, King Middle School is scheduled to debut its new dining hall—a partnership subsidized in part by Chez Panisse’s Waters—that promises fresh produce for students. Superintendent Lawrence has stated she wants the King program available to all students within five years.

Currently Longfellow and Willard middle schools are the culinary jewels of the district. Each receives federal grant money to provide international food and salad bars prepared on site. Both elementary schools and King currently serve pre-packaged food.

The Stationary Engineers, Local 39, which represents district food service workers, cautiously backs the district’s vision, which calls for retaining workers and ultimately hiring additional staff to prepare fresh food. The union has historically butted heads with the district over food service and still remains skeptical of the plan in light of the school board’s decision last month to lay off the equivalent of two food delivery drivers and reduced the hours of its inventory operator.

“If they’re planning to have fresh produce every day it requires capacity to receive and deliver the food, but Candito has destroyed the infrastructure to serve kids,” said Local 39 Business Representative Stephanie Allen. “It’s my members who have to serve this garbage to students. There’s nothing they would like more than to prepare and serve good food.”

The initiative calls for California to sell $12.3 billion in general obligation bonds for construction and renovation of K-12 schools and higher education facilities.

School districts would have to demonstrate the need for new or modernized facilities.

If the measure passes by the needed two-thirds majority, Berkeley Unified will seek $4 million for renovation work on the high school. UC Berkeley will seek money towards the retrofit of Giannini Hall and Davis Hall and the replacement of Campbell Hall.

The LAO estimates the bonds would cost $24.7 billion to pay off over 30 years, with an average annual payment for principal and interest of $823 million.

The ballot measure has been endorsed by the California Teachers Association, the California State PTA, the California Chamber of Commerce, Sen. Barbara Boxer and the California Taxpayers’ Association. The National Tax-Limitation Committee and State Senator Rico Oller have officially oppose it.

Proposition 56

Proposition 56, known as the Budget Accountability Act, is proposed to ensure on-time budgets from the California government. Whether it actually would, of course, is subject to debate.

The largest change that the measure proposes is a reduction of the percentage of votes needed in both houses of the State Legislature to pass the budget and any budget-related tax and appropriation bills. Currently a budget must be passed by a two-thirds vote in both houses. Prop. 56 proposes that the number be dropped to 55 percent.

Prop. 56 also requires the Legislature to set up a 25 percent reserve fund, to be spent only in case of certain emergencies.

As a punishment for not passing the budget on time, Prop. 56 will require the Legislature to stay in session until the budget is passed, and both the Legislature and governor would permanently lose their salaries and expenses for each day the budget is late. The proposition prohibits legislators from punishing or threatening other legislators for their budget votes, though how that could be enforced is difficult to see. The proposition also calls for a link to a website with the voting records of each legislator on budget-related issues. Presumably, Prop. 56 proponents believe that alone would be punishment enough.

Proposition 57

Proposition 57 is Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposed $15 billion economic recovery bond to pay off the state’s General Fund deficit. The bond is considered a one-time fix to get the state out of its present economic hole. The measure replaces former Gov. Davis’ $12 billion bond proposal, later held by the courts because it did not go before the voters.

Prop. 57 will not increase taxes and instead will be re-paid over a nine to 14-year period using one-quarter cent of existing sales tax revenue. Prop. 57 is also closely tied to Prop. 58 and both have to pass together to go into affect.

Proposition 58

Proposition 58 amends the California constitution to require that it enact a balanced budget. Currently, the governor is required to propose a balanced budget but there’s no law to make the Legislature pass one. The measure also includes a clause that would explicitly prevent most bond financing of any future deficits.

The second part of the measure requires the establishment of a reserve called the Budget Stabilization Account which will help repay the $15 billion bond proposed by Prop. 57. Funds for the Budget Stabilization Act will be taken from revenues slotted for the General Fund.

Proposition 58 proponents say it will help to ensure that Prop. 57 is successful.

Measure A

The initiative would increase the county sales tax by a half-cent to raise an estimated $90 million a year for health services. If approved by a two-thirds majority, the county sales tax would rise to 8.75 percent—the highest in the state. The tax would sunset in 2019.

Seventy-five percent would go to the Alameda County Medical System—the public hospital and health care network that includes Highland Hospital, with the remaining 25 percent divided among facilities that offer uncompensated public health services and community health clinics, including Berkeley-based Lifelong Medical.

Supporters of the measure, including Supervisor Keith Carson, the Alameda County Taxpayers Association and the Alameda County Fire Department, argue that without the tax hike, the county would be forced to further reduce emergency services for all residents and primary care for poor and uninsured children and families.

Dr. Lance Montauk argues the medical center mismanaged funds and was late in alerting county supervisors of the mounting debt. He pointed to improving economic fortunes in the county that could make a $90 million a year tax hike unnecessary.m

Those observers who believe in the old Thomas Jefferson adage that “the government is best which governs least” would have been tickled to death with Berkeley City Council last Tuesday night. The council managed to adjourn before 8 p.m., with the bulk of the hour-long meeting taken up by public comment. And if Councilmember Miriam Hawley had not stopped to ask a couple of questions about an off-street parking ordinance, the council would have gotten by without discussing a single item.

The evening began with the cancellation of the 5 p.m. study session on future budget reduction impacts when a council quorum did not show up, and the building elevator broke down. The use of the elevator is necessary for disabled citizens to be able to reach the second-floor council chambers, where city council meetings are held. There were only three items up for discussion on the 7 p.m. meeting agenda. One of them—adding requirements for appeals from a Zoning Adjustments Board decision—immediately got moved to the non-discussion “consent” part of the agenda. A second item—a recommendation by the Citizens Humane Commission for changes in the city’s animal care budget—was pulled from the calendar by the city manager. And after Councilmember Hawley got her questions answered about the off-street parking ordinance, the council passed it unanimously on Hawley’s motion with no discussion.

Still, even in the absence of talk, at least one item of citywide interest was passed at Tuesday’s meeting. The council passed, on first reading, an ordinance banning smoking within 20 feet of bus stops. Like many California cities, Berkeley already bans smoking in many public places, as well as within 20 feet of building entrances and air vents. Violation of the bus stop no-smoking ordinance will be an infraction, subject to fines from $100 for the first offense to $500 for multiple offenses within the same year.y

Friends of Fred Lupke—the Berkeley disabled activist killed in a traffic accident last year—will gather at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday at the third floor Community Room of the Berkeley Library’s Main Branch, 2090 Kittredge St. to celebrate his life and work.

Among other projects, Lupke led the fight to install a therapeutic warm water pool at Berkeley High School, and shortly before his death was involved in the opposition to the proposed Library Gardens housing development behind the central library. The development is slated to replace a parking lot, and Lupke had expressed fear that it would hinder downtown access for disabled residents.

Lupke was killed last September when a car struck his wheelchair on Ashby Avenue between Harper and Ellis streets. The driver of the car was not charged in the accident since Lupke was prohibited by California law to ride his motorized wheelchair in the street. Many of the city’s disabled activists bitterly complained following his death that the impassable condition of the sidewalk gave him no choice. Wheelchair riders said they avoided that stretch of sidewalk because of numerous potholes and a defunct driveway that that sloped the narrow pavement, making passage almost impossible.

The city recently completed repairs to the stretch of sidewalk.

Councilmember Dona Spring, who is disabled herself and uses a motorized wheelchair, said she was heartened by the stepped-up city sidewalk repairs, but notes that there are still many locations where wheelchair riders are not able to go. She pointed to one of them directly across from the old City Hall on Milvia Street, the sidewalk on the west side of Civic Center Park that is too narrow to permit wheelchair travel. The sidewalk is directly in sight of windows from the chambers where Berkeley City Council does its weekly deliberation.

The celebration will include live music, food from Cafe De La Paz, a photographic tribute and an opportunity for friends to share their memories of Lupke. A brief program will begin at 2:15 p.m. highlighted by a Berkeley City Council proclamation declaring the former Oakland resident an honorary resident of Berkeley.

The Police Review Commission opted Wednesday night to take no position on a Berkeley Police Department proposal to establish a canine unit. The commission requested further information about planned procedures and asked for additional language to be included before taking a vote.

Armed Robbery At Berkeley High

A person was robbed at gunpoint at Berkeley High School last Thursday. The three suspects were last seen running towards Channing Way, BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield said. Schofield did not have information on whether the victim was a student or what was robbed.

Elementary School Theft

A BMX bicycle valued at more than $400 was stolen from Washington Elementary school Monday.

Stolen Wallet

An 18-year old male reported that someone stole his wallet at around 4 a.m. at North Aquatic Park.Ã

I have often said that in the 16 years since I’ve been back in my home town—almost all of them living in Oakland’s District 7—I have never actually seen my councilmember inside the boundaries of my district. That takes in three separate councilmembers: L eo Bazile, Dezzie Woods-Jones, and now Larry Reid. For the record, I am not claiming that none of my councilmembers have never set foot in the district. Just not in the places where I frequent, during the times that I frequent them. And I am also not clai ming that they are purposely avoiding me. It just so happens that I ain’t happened up on them, is all.

You can say the same thing, I suppose, for my mayor and my at-Large city councilmember. Except that I can now see Mayor Brown on television every night, if I want, urging me to buy my car at Oakland’s Auto Row. And for the last several days, At-Large City Councilmember Henry Chang has been showing up on enormous billboards along International and MacArthur, peaceful, benevolent, smiling down upon me as I drive by, reassuring me that he is out there, somewhere, helping Oakland to move forward. Since this cannot be a message of common accomplishment—Oakland east of the Fruitvale seems, after all, to be moving in a distinctly backward direction these days—one can only assume that the Chang billboards are a parent admonition for me and my neighbors to just hustle and catch up, now, or we are going to have to be left behind.

That my at-large city councilmember is normally so invisible—his own way of describ ing himself, by the way—is apparently by design. We learn from this morning’s Oakland Tribune, and I quote extensively, that: “Councilmember Danny Wan, who is helping to orchestrate Chang’s campaign, said his colleague is not comfortable trumpeting his ac complishments and worries about stepping on the toes of the other council members, who are elected by district.”

“He’s quiet,” Mr. Wan is quoted in the Tribune as saying, “but speaks up when it matters.” The operative “when it matters,” one might suppos e, is when Mr. Chang must come back before the voters for re-election. And having known and studied politicians much of my adult life, it is my distinct impression that the only time this category of citizen does not trumpet its own accomplishments is whe n it simply has no notes to play.

Meanwhile, in a matter totally unrelated to Mr. Chang, one notes with some concern the reports in the Los Angeles Times coming out of the recent California state convention of our good friends, the Republicans, in Burlingame. Each political party is allowed to pick its own issues to highlight and, not being a registered Republican myself, I leave it to my Republican brothers and sisters to decide upon their own. Still, it is the way in which they choose to present those issues that is somewhat disturbing.

In speaking about the reluctance of Attorney General Lockyer to be dictated to on the issue of gay marriages by Gov. Schwarzenegger, Mr. Howard Kaloogian remarked “I don’t know where the attorney general stands on this. Perhaps he stands in line.” The line to which Mr. Kaloogian refers, presumably, is the recent gathering of gay and lesbian couples lining up to marry in the city and county of San Francisco. It’s one’s right to take a position on one side or the other o n gay and lesbian marriages, of course, but this takes us back to the old, locker room days when calling someone a “fag” was a proper and acceptable put-down. The Los Angeles Times certainly saw it that way, characterizing Mr. Kaloogian’s remarks as “ques tion[ing] the sexual orientation” of Mr. Lockyer. That Mr. Kaloogian is no fringe demonstrator standing on the convention steps, but rather one of the three candidates in the Republican primary for the United States Senate, makes it all the more disturbi ng.

Mr. Kaloogian, the former state assemblymember from Encinitas and the former chairperson of the Recall Gray Davis Committee (I suppose he prefers “assemblyman” and “chairman”, but since it’s my column, I’ll call him what I want), also figured promine ntly in the other incidents of baiting at the Republican convention, aimed at illegal immigrant workers.

At a Kaloogian rally just outside the convention hotel, the L.A. Times reports two boys wearing “Kaloogian For Senate” T-shirts carrying posters read ing “No Terrorist Driver’s License” (referring, one might remember, to the law—passed by the California legislature and later rescinded under pressure of the election of Gov. Schwarzenegger—to grant drivers licenses to illegal immigrants). The posters, th e Times also reported, had photographs of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

These are people who feel, I suppose, that the sweet little Ecuadorean ladies cleaning toilets for a living over in those Marin County mansions hide explosive devices up their dra wers.

Also at the Kaloogian rally, the chairperson of the Glenn County Republican Party complained that “the main street in our little town (some 100 miles north of Sacramento) looks like Tijuana.” As in, a lot of Mexicans, one wonders?

Republican Unite d States Congressmember Tom Tancredo, who came out for the activities from his home in Colorado, blasted Republican President Bush’s proposal to legalize some of our presently-illegal immigrant workers, stating that “People are still coming across our bor ders with the intent to do terrible things to us,” though one might think that the terrible occurrence might be if that Ecuadorean woman stops cleaning those Marin County toilets, forcing their lovely employers to get down on their knees and do it themselves.

And another Republican delegate, this one from Millbrae, simply cut to the chase, hanging a sign around his neck reading “No Way Jose.”

How far a step is that, one wonders, from “Nigger Go Home?” One wonders. One worries. A beast seems about to be unleashed.

Three measures touted as electoral reforms will greet Berkeley voters when they confront their electronic voting machine touchscreens next Tuesday: two propositions designed to transform the way they vote and a third that would change the way candidates make it on the ballot.

Under current city law, a runoff election is required within 28 days of the regular November city election if no candidate for mayor, city council or city auditor receives 45 percent of the votes (the current threshold for victory). Measure H reduces the threshold for mandating a runoff to 40 percent and delays the runoff election until the following February.

Measure J imposes a $150 filing fee on candidates for all city offices, a fee which would be offset at the rate of one dol lar for every eligible signature collected, up to the total amount of the filing fee. Candidates would still have to pay $35 toward printing costs for their statements. Also under the changes proposed in Measure J, candidates for city council could only b e nominated by signatures of eligible voters within their council district.

Both Measures H and J were put on the ballot by Berkeley City Council with no city councilmembers dissenting.

The most controversial local issue on Tuesday’s ballot is Measure I, which would give the city instant runoff voting (IRV), otherwise known as rank-ordered voting—a method of voting that eliminates the need for separate runoff elections.

The system is used in nationwide legislative races in Australia and in the London m ayoral elections and was adopted by San Francisco voters two years ago for implementation in this November’s city election.

IRV would end runoffs by having voters rank candidates by order of preference. Measure I leaves the ultimate decision on impleme nting IRV to the city council if members decide implementation is practical given existing technology and procedures and doesn’t create additional costs–and if it doesn’t conflict with consolidation of a city election with a county election.

The proposal prompted heated city council debates, notably between opponent Gordon Wozniak and supporter Dona Spring. Wozniak offered a sample chart showing how the same vote could end in three different outcomes, depending on the particular form of IRV employed.

T hough proponents hail IRV as a means of bolstering democracy and saving costs on runoffs, opponents predict passage would discourage voters, increase electoral complexity, and lead to greater costs.

City council has split over Measure I. Councilmember Miriam Hawley signed the argument for I, while H support and Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek signed the argument against. H supporter and Peralta Community College Trustee Darryl Moore supports I, while Wozniak, an H supporter, has been one of Measure I’s most vocal foes.

Other I supporters include Berkeley school board president John Selawsky, the League of Women Voters, Helen Burke of the Sierra Club and Assemblymember Loni Hancock. Signatories against I include the presidents of the Elmwood Neighborhood and Panoramic Hill associations and Jesse Gabriel, last year’s UC Berkeley ASUC president.

Proponents of Measure I, backed by national and state organizations, have raised over $16,000 to fund their campaign. The Center for Voting and Democracy of Takoma Pa rk, Maryland, has been the largest contributor to the IRV for Berkeley committee, giving $6,500 so far.

Headed by John B. Anderson, a 1980 independent presidential candidate who won six million votes, the center has been a major force in pushing for IRV laws, taking a lead role in the March 5, 2002, election that brought IRV to San Francisco.

Two affiliated organizations also chipped in for the Berkeley campaign: Californians for Electoral Reform, another major player in the San Francisco election, don ated $200 and Citizens for Proportional Representation donated $300.

The largest individual donor, Rufus Browning, gave $1,000. A Berkeley resident, he is the director of the Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University.

Another major IRV supporter is the Green Party.

IRV proponents have mounted an impressive website to bolster the campaign (www.irv4berkeley.org), listing endorsement from 20 organizations, 29 elected and appointed officials, and 98 individuals (including such diverse fol k as columnist and former gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington, author Michael Parenti and singer Jello Biafra).

The one false note on the IRV website accompanies a plea for at least $20,000 in donations “[b]ecause of our well-funded opponents.” Bu t if anyone with deep pockets is giving cash to oppose Measure I, it’s news to Sherry Kelly, Berkeley city clerk, who has yet to receive a single legally required report of anyone putting up anything to fund an opposition campaign.

H has been endorsed by all members of the city council, and no one filed an argument against the proposal, although some opposition has surfaced since the ballot arguments were finalized. The city attorney’s analysis said that any elections eliminated by the lower win percenta ges would save the city $100,000 on a council district runoff and $100,000 for a city-wide mayoral or auditor’s race.

Proponents of Measure J—including Mayor Tom Bates, Zoning Adjustments Board chair Laurie Capitelli, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, school board president John Selawsky, Assemblymember Hancock, librarian and union activist Jane Scantlebury, and former ASUC vice president for external affairs James Bryant—say the change will make elections more representative, attract more serious candidates and provide a modest contribution to offset city ballot printing costs.

Wondering what to do with all those unwanted holiday presents? Tired of negotiating the clustered clutter that’s filling up your garage? Wondering what to do with your old camera now that you’ve gone digital?

And does peddling the stuff on eBay seem like too much of a hassle, even though you could use the cash?

Then consider Picture It Sold!, one of the newest additions to the ranks of Ashby Avenue merchants, operating from a storefront just a couple of doors west of College.

Kevin McGinnis would love it if you did.

The 37-year-old Oakland journalist raised the cash for opening his shop in a decidedly politically incorrect manner, at least for Berkeley—by betting on the hazards of war.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq last March, McGinnis found himself secretly hoping some of Iraq’s oil fields would go up in flames so could make a bundle when the company he’d sunk his savings into, Boots & Coots International Well Control, put its oil field fire team to work.

“Everyone was afraid he [Saddam Hussein] was going to torch all those wells,” McGinnis said. “So I bought it at about 60 cents a share, and it got as high as about $2.50, but I sold it at $2.25. So I took all the money and ran.”

Armed with his windfall, last August McGinnis and his wife Erin opened Picture It Sold, their eBay consignment shop, joining the ranks of a new breed of entrepreneurs who ride the coattails of one of e-commerce’s most phenomenal successes.

Founded in 1995, eBay lets users log on to buy or sell just about anything, from rare collector’s items to computers. After selling $14.87 billion in merchandise in 2002, the fast-growing San Jose firm saw net revenues climb 60 percent in 2003, reaching an astonishing $24 billion.

By charging a percentage of the merchandises’ sales price, eBay has made more than enough cash to flood the media with ads.

For many would-be sellers, the notion of holding an e-auction seems daunting. That old velvet Elvis painting in the basement may no longer be wanted, but is it worth the time and effort required to auction it off?

For those who answer no, enter the McGinnisses.

At their small Elmwood shop, the couple and their staff of seven receive unwanted possessions, research their value, and take digital photos they use to run a seven-day eBay auction from the small bank of computers in the rear of the shop.

Once an item sells, the McGinnisses package it up and ship it off to the buyer, then cut the seller a check after deducting a 35 percent commission on the first $500, and 25 percent on anything above that.

Asked to name the most interesting item they’ve sold, they point to a vintage collection of Life magazines, dating from the 1930s to the 1980s.

The McGinnisses’ concept isn’t entirely new. eBay runs a ‘trading assistant’ program, allowing some 27,000 registered users—most working from home—to advertise their selling services to those without the time or inclination to do it themselves. The McGinnisses took the concept a step further by opening a bricks-and-mortar storefront.

Their primary Bay Area competitor is San Carlos-based AuctionDrop, which opened a string of stores around the region during the past year.

McGinnis quit his job as a news editor at KGO Channel 7 two years ago to strike out on his own. “I was putting in some really long hours, working hard, and I just remember telling myself every day that life is too short,” he said.

Opening an online jewelry shop, he found it difficult to draw in traffic—so he turned to eBay and local consignment shops to make sales, and both worked well, and the idea behind Picture It Sold was born.

McGinniss says 25 to 30 customers come to his storefront daily, toting items worth anywhere from $50 to thousands. Though declining to give numbers, the McGinnisses say they’re taking in twice the cash they’d anticipated at this point.

A combination of heavy traffic at the Ashby and College intersection in front of their shop plus the billboard they ran during the autumn next to Interstate 880 in Emeryville have generated a healthy flow of walk-in customers.

One recent afternoon found the store bustling. Ted Little turned up to sell a vintage surfboard, after he spotted the big banner out front (‘Bring us Your Stuff. We’ll Sell it on eBay!’) and figured, “why not?”

“I’ll try this out and see how it works,” Little said at the time, “I know what [eBay] is, but I’ve never thought about using it.”

A few weeks later Little was something of a convert. His surfboard fetched $150, double his expectation, leading to many return visits. “I was impressed with their service,” he said. A salvaged, 97-year-old sword found inside the wall of a house he’d been reconstructing fetched an impressive $500.

Little, who owns a small steel fabrication shop, said the time saved by using Picture it Sold more than justified their fees. “I can make money with my time, so I don’t want to cut into it,” he said. “If I had to take responsibility to enter an item and ship it and all that, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

Bob Marsh, real estate agent and consumer electronics collector, said that since spotting their billboard in September, he’s sold 20-plus items, mostly used stereo equipment. “The process is about as easy as can be,” Marsh said, “You do nothing but wait for a check in the mail.”

Marsh said he’d found running an eBay auction—contacting the buyer, packing , shipping, and arranging payment—forbiddingly time-consuming, and vows to continue using the shop “as long as they keep sending me the checks.”

Greg Smith, an analyst who covers eBay for Merrill Lynch in San Francisco, said it’s a bit early to know how bricks-and-mortar trading assistants like Picture it Sold will affect the company itself. While “a significant amount of volume is people selling on behalf of others” through the trading assistant program, he said only a “tiny proportion” comes through shops like Picture it Sold.

Jennifer Chu Caukins, an eBay spokesperson, said the company’s been pleasantly surprised by the advent of businesses like McGiniss’. “A lot of this just happened on its own,” she said. “We’re thrilled about it, and we’re supportive of it.”

Though the McGinnisses hope to expand, AuctionDrop is already on the move—opened in March of 2003, it’s backed by $3 million in venture capital from Mobius Venture Capital and Draper Associates of Silicon Valley.

Corporate spokesperson Andrea Roesch said a fifth AuctionDrop store will opened in San Jose this month, augmenting current outlets in San Carlos, San Rafael, Los Altos and Menlo Park. The company plans to move into Los Angeles later in the year and eventually attempt “the development of a national brand” by reaching the East Coast before 2005.

The McGinnisses feel their approach is distinct enough from AuctionDrop’s that they’ll be able to carve out their own niche, and grow at their own pace without taking on outside investors.

“We pride ourselves on trying to bring the culture of eBay into our store—it’s kind of folksy,” Erin said, while their competitor’s rapid expansion gives them the aura of a big-budget chain compared to the cozy mom-and-pop aura of Picture it Sold.

One pressing question for everyone out to capitalize on the growing popularity of eBay is whether or not their current customers will remain unwilling (and sufficiently tech-wary) to auction their possessions themselves.

McGinnis hopes to avoid undue dependence on his current customer base by convincing merchants to use his services to market excess to other businesses—a course eBay itself is pursuing. Chu Caukins said that similar transactions on eBay totaled over $1 billion in 2002, making them “an increased focus for us.”

“There’s potential in people’s garages,” McGinnis said, “but there’s so much more in these business-to-business relationships.” Confident that the move to a business-to-business model will help ensure the firm’s healthy growth, he and Erin have decided to sell the dry cleaning business they’d also been running, and focus solely on Picture it Sold.

Jesus Diaz pats a callused palm on the smooth, stretched head of a drum. The sound of it, a single beat, reverberates across the mostly-empty La Peña rehearsal space. It is answered, almost immediately, with booming percussion from the flock of accompanying drummers.

“You can’t play music by yourself,” Diaz says with a broad smile. “Well you can,” he quickly adds. But when you’re playing in a group “for every action there is a reaction.” He taps again, and his fellow Cuban drummers answer with an infectious, multi-rhythmic beat. It makes even a reporter want to drop the pen and notepad and get up and shake something. Newton’s law proven once more, Diaz concludes with the whole purpose of the exercise. “And that’s what makes it interesting.”

“Interesting” is probably an understatement for what these drummers will be showcasing this coming weekend at La Peña Cultural Center on south Shattuck Avenue. Co-presented by Diaz and La Peña “De Aquí P’Allá Con Clave” will feature several musicians from the growing Cuban population that is quickly making the Bay Area one of the hearts of the United States’ Cuban music scene.

For Diaz, a Cuban-born Bay-Area percussionist and singer/songwriter, music is an expression of his surroundings, part of vibrant music tradition that he learned growing up in Cuba. Diaz, who has lived in the US since 1980, and for several other Bay Area Cuban musicians, have carried Cuba with them, creating a closely-knit music community that continues to inspire and create a culturally rich music that blends the cultures of both nations.

For more than 20 years, La Peña has been promoting shows by local Cuban artists but not until now have they been able to create a show as large and broad as “De Aquí P’Allá Con Clave,” which translates into “from here to there” and refers to the continuity of Cuban music from the Bay Area to Cuba and vice-versa.

“In Cuba they are so isolated that the culture has been really preserved,” said Sylvia Sherman, the development director for La Peña. “Here in the Bay Area they want to create an environment that will also preserve that tradition.”

Brought together by Diaz, the show will feature a variety of Cuban artists that represent the various music genres played in Cuba, all of which are based on the traditional Afro-Cuban folklore music that is infused with both African and Spanish influences.

“The show is about building community, it doesn’t help for everyone to be so spread out,” said Diaz, whose band QBA plays Cuban timba, a music based on the traditional Cuban folklore music and influenced by jazz, funk and hip-hop.

“It’s almost like going to visit your grandmother,” said Diaz about the ability of the show to help strengthen the Bay Area’s Cuban community.

Many or all of the musicians in the show came to United States as economic refugees who were struggling under the United States’ embargo against Cuba. The musicians say the embargo has helped them create a culturally rich music, but has also limited their scope, and the move to the United States, they say, was necessary as a way to re-energize the music.

The musicians however, never forgot their island roots, and the show at La Peña is meant to showcase both sides of the 90-mile gulf between the two countries. Sandy Perez, for example, who is only 33 years old and dresses in baggy jeans and a baseball cap, is well-known as one of the most talented Cuban folklore musicians from Matanzas. That is one of several provinces which have helped preserve the Afro-Cuban roots of the folklore music.

Diaz is also grounded in a folklore tradition, taking cues from both the “street” music he saw everyday and the religious and classical music both his parents played.

“If you live in Cuba and you like music you can’t get away from it,” he said.

Isolation also works in reverse, said Diaz, forcing Cuban musicians to constantly recreate their sounds to stay original.

“Here they drill the same type of song over and over again on the radio,” he said. “Cuban music is a lot different, it’s mandatory for you to create your own voice, we [QBA] do not sound like anyone else.”

Los Angeles musicians Gustavo Ramirez, who plays piano, and Jorge “El Sagua” Perez, who plays bass, say that back in Cuba it was a constant struggle to even find instruments to practice on, much less find new music from outside Cuba to listen to. Both say they respect the Cuban roots and both are well-grounded in traditional folklore music. But because they have struggled to branch out, they’ve also become some of the leading innovators in the newly resurfacing Cuban jazz scene.

According to Diaz, Cuban music is very participatory “The number one goal,” he said, “is to engage the audience.” The upcoming shows, he adds, will be no exception, when La Peña opens up the dance floor for several of the performances. Feet tapping, this reporter agrees.

Performances will take place this coming Friday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at the La Peña Cultural Center located at 3105 Shattuck Ave. On Saturday night there will also be a discussion with the musicians. Tickets are $16 in advance and $20 at the door. For advanced tickets or for more information, contact the La Peña box office at 849-2568, ext. 20, or at www.lapena.org.

“The Evolution from Africa” An African American history lesson given through spoken word, music, song, dance and dialogue, at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School Auditorium 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $1-$3. All proceeds go directly to the afterschool programs.

Aurora Theatre, “Man of Destiny” by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Barbara Oliver at 8 p.m. Through March 7. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

A Traveling Jewish Theater, “Times Like These” at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $20-$28. 415-285-8080. www.atjt.com

Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater, “Street Soldier The Play” a benefit for Omega Boys Club and celebrating Black History month at 2:30 and 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 1-800-SOLDIER.

“De Aquí P’ Allá Con Clave” a new work of Cuban music and dance directed by Jesus Diaz, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. tickets are $16 in advance, $20 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org

World Heart Beat, a benefit concert and dance party in support of Berkeley’s Interfaith Pagan Pride Parade and Celebration with Stephen Kent, composer and multi-instrumentalist, at 8 p.m. at 2525 Eighth St., at Dwight Way. Cost is $13-$20, sliding scale. All ages welcome. 649-6051. www.paganparade.org

From Monument to Masses, Caesura Free Verse, The Yellow Press, The Drogues at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926.

Drunken Cat Paws at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.

SUNDAY, FEB. 29

CHILDREN

“Dragons Never Laugh” puppet adventures with Princess Moxie at 2 and 4 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $4 for children $6 for adults. 644-2204.

Picture Book Circle at the Magnes Museum Children ages 4-8 and their families will read and look at classic, illustrated books and discuss Jewish values. Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz, the acclaimed author of Inside, Picture Books, developed the program exclusively for the Magnes. The six Sundays is $50 per child for members and $60 for non-members at meets at 2 p.m. To register please call 549-6950. www.magnes.org

THEATER

A Traveling Jewish Theater: “Times Like These” at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $20-$28. 415-285-8080. www.atjt.com

Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater, “Street Soldier The Play” a benefit for Omega Boys Club and celebrating Black History month at 3 and 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 1-800-SOLDIER.

FILM

Victor Sjostrom: “The Scarlet Letter” at 2 p.m. and “Under the Red Robe” at 4:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Chamber Music Sundaes The Navarro Piano Trio performs Schubert, Bruch, and Danielpur at 3:15 p.m. at St John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$18, available at the door. 415-584-5946.

“3, 4, 6, 8 Hands, 1 & 2 Pianos” presented by the Holy Names College Music Department with works by Alkan, Rachmaninoff, Schickele, Schubert and Smetana at 3 p.m. at Regents’ Theatre, Valley Center for the Performing Arts, Holy Names College, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $6-$12 available at the door.

56th Annual Festival of the Oaks, a day long celebration of international music and dance sponsored by Laney College Dance Dept., Berkeley Folk Dance Club and California Folk Dance Federation. Held at the Laney College gym from 10 a.m. For information call 527-2177.

Flamenco Open Stage with Alicia and Roberto Zamora at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com

“High Touch Low Tech” a joint art exhibition with Piedmont High School and National Institute of Art and Disabilities, exploring works that visually stimulate the sense of touch, at the Florence Ludins-Katz Gallery, 551 23rd St., near Barrett Ave., Richmond. Reception for the artists from 6 to 8 p.m.

FILM

Women of Color Film Festival “Laughter and Activism” at 5:30 at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers Phillip T. Nails and Charselle, followed by an open mic, at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. For information call 526-5985 or 205-1749.

Rosario Marín is betting that the California Republican Party is ready to nominate a pro-choice, anti-illegal immigration and anti-tax hike Mexican immigrant to go against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in November. After all, Californians just elected a pro-choice immigrant Republican governor.

But Arnold Schwarzenegger, it seems, was another story.

Usually it’s not easy being a moderate Republican in California. You must jump through hoops to court an extremely conservative party base in the primaries, without losing the wide appeal that could make you successful in a statewide race. Marín, a former U.S. Treasurer and mayor of Huntington Park, a city teeming with Latino Democrats who voted for her several times, is finding that out as she vies for her party’s nod.

None of the potential Republican nominees seems likely to win against Boxer in November (polls continue to show her beating each of them), but Marín’s nomination could make it a little harder for the senator who, instead of running against a typical anti-choice white male, would have to battle a pro-choice immigrant woman.

As Marín has said, the “typical anti-choice white male” is what Barbara Boxer has for breakfast. Defeating such a candidate is a cinch for Boxer in California’s political environment. Most important, Marín could help dilute the extreme right-wing, anti-immigrant image that her party has been burdened with since the mid-1990s.

But Marín is losing in all the polls, and she received no support from the state’s GOP leadership. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former governors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson are backing traditional conservative former secretary of state Bill Jones, even though Marín has raised nearly $1 million dollars in campaign funds to Jones’ $310,000, according to the latest report.

She also has an impressive list of supporters from grass-roots Republican organizations, more than 50 of them, like the California Congress of Republicans and California Republican League. The candidate also has the support of dozens of local elected officials and a quarter of the Republicans in the state assembly, including all five women GOP legislators.

Republican party leadership argues that Bill Jones, who spent more than two decades in public life, first in the assembly and then as secretary of state, will be a better candidate and senator even though party members rejected him in the 2000 gubernatorial primary and he’s more conservative than most Californians.

Fernando Guerra, professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, says Jones “would be easy prey for Barbara Boxer.” Marín could really give Boxer a run for her money, he says. As a Mexican immigrant, she could potentially raise the votes Republicans usually get from Latinos to more than 40 percent.

As Ken Khachigian, Marín’s campaign consultant argues, “If Bill Simon had received 40 percent of California’s Latino vote in 2002, and then won a mere one percent more from women, he would be governor today. He got only 24 percent of Latino voters and 37 percent of women voters, according to exit polls. Similarly, in Matt Fong’s 1998 loss to Boxer, he won only 23 percent of Latino voters.”

Khachigian argues that Marín is the only candidate who could easily reach that 40 percent threshold and “combine that with the ability to deprive Boxer of the gender superiority she has enjoyed in elections past.”

Marín, who came with her family to California from Mexico City when she was 14, talks tough on immigration, pledging that “stopping illegal immigration” would be among her top priorities, but also arguing for deep reforms. “More attention must be paid to the core causes of illegal immigration rather than the symptoms, such as drivers’ licenses and Proposition 187,” she has said. She proposes to “make” Mexico reform its economy to make it stop sending “its unemployment line to the United States.”

She has also shown her most conservative side, supporting an outright ban on gay marriages and criticizing Jones on his role in passing a tax increase when he was in the legislature, saying she would “never” raise taxes.

Republicans will probably continue the string of losses statewide that has made them the minority in California offices --there are no Republican constitutional officers, except the new governor; Democrats are the majority in both houses of the legislature.

The demographic diversity of the state—a growing Latino vote that, according to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), registers 60 percent Democratic, 19 percent independent and only 20 percent Republican—is not going to make it any easier for conservative Anglo Republicans to win statewide.

Candidates like Marín could be the exception. If only they could get through the primaries.

Armed with a camera and a curious eye, Daily Planet reporter Richard Brenneman strolled along four blocks of a Berkeley street recently week in search of interesting visual discoveries that might escape the ordinary hurried pedestrian. The photographs on this page represent the first selection of his findings, and more will follow in future editions. Guess as many as you can. Free Berkeley Daily Planet T-shirts await the first five readers to correctly identify the street addresses where each photograph was taken. Send your responses to the Daily Planet Photo Contest, Berkeley Daily Planet, 3023A Shattuck Ave., Berkeley 94705, or e-mail to news@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Deadline is 5 p.m., March 12.

Sunday night found more than 30 friends and family members of Berkeley teenager Miguel Caicedo gathered beside a Bancroft Street memorial in his honor at the spot where he died a little more than two days before. Candles bearing the images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary illuminated empty bottles of whiskey, cans of Budweiser, stuffed animals and a red bandana.

Well past its fiftieth hour, the vigil demonstrated the West Berkeley community’s affection for the 15-year-old and its distrust of the Berkeley Police Department.

Caicedo was struck dead at 4:14 p.m. Friday by an oncoming pick-up truck on Bancroft Way between West and Bonar streets, said police spokesperson Kevin Schofield. Caicedo was riding a motorized go-cart and apparently turned onto the street directly in front of the truck.

“He died of massive head and upper body injuries,” Schofield said. The police spokesperson added that the driver of the truck is cooperating with police and has not been charged.

Friends said Caicedo—a sophomore—was suspended from Berkeley High last fall after a brawl, which they insist Caicedo was merely trying to break up. Friends said Caicedo had recently completed a stint under house arrest stemming from that incident, and that and that the experience had given him a more mature approach to life.

A young man identifying himself only as Mousie, a longtime friend who said he was also sent to juvenile hall after last fall’s fight at Berkeley High, said, “He was telling me not to cut class, and saying ‘Man I need to get back into school.’ He was trying to do well, but the police always fucked with him.”

“He was turning his life around,” said Karen Tolton, another family friend. She remembered Caicedo as “a great kid...Miguel was always smiling.”

Caicedo had returned for Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA)—a program for at-risk youth—and was scheduled to enroll in an alternative school next month, friends said.

Kevin Williams, director of BYA said Caicedo had returned from Juvenile Hall in January with “a different, more mature aura about him.”

According to witnesses to the events preceding Friday afternoon’s tragic accident, Caicedo was in Strawberry Canyon Park with friends when three police officers arrived.

“He was sober, but he was scared, so when he saw the police, he took off in his cousin’s go-cart,” said friend Israel Jimenez.

Police did not chase Caicedo, who rode the go-cart through a narrow pathway leading from the park onto Bancroft and to his death. Later, at the accident scene after Ceicedo had been rushed to Highland Hospital, his helmet lay about 30 feet from where the truck had come to a halt, with clothes and go-cart strewn underneath the dented front fender beside a pool of blood.

While there is no evidence the police played any direct role in Caicedo’s death, some friends and neighbors who gathered at the accident scene Friday turned their anger on the officers present. Several youths cursed at police standing behind yellow caution tape cordoning off the accident scene.

Strawberry Canyon Park has a reputation for lawless behavior. Neighbors have long complained about frequent gambling, drinking and drug use by youth at the park.

There have been complaints about automobile traffic on the street where Caicedo died, as well. Last year, neighbors also petitioned the city council to put a stop sign at the intersection of Bancroft and West—which the truck passed a half-block before striking Caicedo. Though police have not determined the truck’s speed, neighbors wondered if a stop-sign might have slowed the truck sufficiently to save Caicedo’s life.

Motorized vehicles geared towards youth have raised noise and safety concerns locally. Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Oakland) has proposed a bill to ban two-wheel scooters for anyone under 16 and without a drivers license. In light of Caicedo’s death, a representative for Chan said the Assemblywoman was considering amending her bill to cover four-wheel go-carts as well.

Friends gathered Sunday at the memorial wanted to focus solely on Caicedo. Friend Karen Tolton recalled a Halloween two years ago, when Caicedo, knowing Tolton was “going through a rough time”, decided to trick-or-treat with her and her children, instead of partying with his friends.

“The love that he gave and received was amazing,” she said.

Caicedo’s parents were not available to comment for this story. Friends said funeral arrangements were not yet finalized by presstime.›

bration with live music and costume making from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Tuesday Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK. Featuring Josh Paxton at 3 p.m. and Wild Buds at 4 p.m. 548-2220, ext. 227. www.ecologycenter.org

“Accessible Tech - The Great Equalizer!” a Berkeley Special Education Parents Network (BSPED) presentation from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Center for Accessible Technology (CforAT), 2547 8th St. AT and universal design in educational materials make a tremendous contribution to a meaningful, equitable education for ALL children. Wheelchair accessible and free. 525-9262. BSPED@mcads.com

“Gaza Strip” A documentary of the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip struggling with the day to day trials of the Israeli occupation. At 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Central Branch, 2090 Kittredge St., 3rd floor community meeting room, wheelchair accessible. Sponsored by Berkeley Peace Walk & Vigil and Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace.

“Judaism, What is it all About?” an interactive lecture series with Rabbi Judah Dardik, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays at Beth Jacob Congregation, 3778 Park Blvd., Oakland. 482-1147. www.bethjacoboakland.org

Triumph Over Fear, Victory Party and Award Ceremony, in honor of all those who made our stunning victory in Raich v. Ashcroft possible, with Attorney General Bill Lockyer, at 5 p.m. at Oakland Box Theater, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Tickets are $50 general public, $35 patients with OCBC i.d. cards. Reservations can be made by calling 764-1494. Sponsored by Angel Wings Patient OutReach.

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830.

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 25

Tilden Tots A nature adventure program to learn about our amphibian friends from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area. For 3 and 4 years olds accompanied by an adult. Fee is $6, $8 for non-residents. Registration required. 525-2233.

Great Decisions 2004: “Weapons of Mass Destruction” with Prof. Harold P. Smith, visiting scholar, Goldman School of Public Policy, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. The Great Decisions program will meet Wednesdays through March 31. Briefing booklets are available. For information and reservations call 526-2925.

March Ballot Free-For-All Join the Gray Panthers for a review of the March ballot measures with Kriss Worthington on Berkeley Measures, Michelle Milam from Loni Hancock’s office on the State Propositions, Avram Gratch, MD on Measure A, and Ms. Quintana-Turner on Prop. 55, at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696.

Public Hearing on University Village Master Plan EIR at 6:30 p.m. in the Multi-purpose Room, Ocean View School, 1000 Jackson St., Albany. Copies of the Subsequent Focused Draft Environmental Impact Report are available for review at the Albany Branch Library, 1247 Marin Ave. or at the University Village office. For more informaion contact Carol Kielusiak at 643-0638.

Third Biennial Meeting of Bay Area Creek and Watershed Groups at 6 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by Aquatic Outreach Institute, East Bay Watershed Center, Friends of Baxter Creek, Friends of Five Creeks, SPAWNERS, Urban Creeks Council. The meeting is free, but please pre-register by calling Mary Malko, at 231-9430. mary@aoinstitute.org

“The Fourth World War” a documentary on the human story of global conflict, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. Benefit for Bay Area Indie Media and Chiapas Support Committee. http://bayarea.indiemedia.org

FRIDAY, FEB. 27

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Eman Assi, Prof. of Architecture, An-Najah National Univ., Nablus, West Bank, “Destruction of Historical Sites in Nablus and Jenin, Palestine” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.

Get Out the Vote a pre-primary evening of political music, humor and discussion at Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at 7 p.m.

“The Evolution from Africa” An African American History lesson given through spoken word, music, song, dance and dialogue by the afterschool students and their families at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $1-$3 at the door. All proceeds go directly to the students and staff of the afterschool program.

“Academic Freedom After 9/11” A conference exploring how the Bush administration’s legislation has impacted institutions of higher learning, at 8 a.m. at International House, Piedmont at Bancroft Ave. Sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 642-8208. cmes@uclink.berkeley.edu

“Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War” and “Imagine America” will be shown at 7 p.m. at the Kucinich for President office, 3362 Adeline, near Alcatraz. 420-0772.

“Literacy and Beyond” Celebrate Black History month at the downtown Berkeley YMCA, 2001 Allston Way from 7 to 9 p.m. Books, poetry and art pro-

jects. 665-3271.

Bay Area Children First Open House at 5 p.m. at Shattuck Commons, 1400 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 7. Auction, foods and crafts. Keynote speakers will include children’s book author and illustrator Thatcher Hurd. 883-9312, ext. 4. www.baychild.org

A Toast to Crew, benefit for the Berkeley Men’s Crew from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the historical Maybeck home of Evelyn Larsen and Bill deCarion. Suggested donation to attend: $35 individual or $50 family. RSVP to Evelyn Larsen erlarsen@arthlink.net

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324.

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231.

SATURDAY, FEB. 28

Mini-Gardeners: Water We'll learn about the water cycle, give our plants a drink, and make watering cans to take home. For ages 4 to 6. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park Cost is $3. Registration required. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org

Creating Your Garden Paradise with Aerin Moore. We will provide you with tools for using the elements of design to make your garden your personal expression of creativity. At 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351.

Saturday Night Sing-Along An evening of campfire classics, silly and serious songs, rounds and movement activities at 7 p.m. at 1216 Solano Ave. at Talbot. Appropriate for all ages. Cost is $3 for adults, $2 for children. Sponsored by the Albany YMCA 525-1130.

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Disaster Mental Health for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Fire Department Training Center, 997 Cedar St. Register on-line at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506.

Home Buying Process Workshop offered by the Unity Council, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1900 Fruitvale Ave. Oakland. This comprehensive workshop will cover all the elements involved in the home buying process, from establishing a budget, how to improve credit, buying power, working with realtors and the approval at the lender’s level. The workshop is free, but registration is requested. 535-6943.

“How to Buy a Home on a Limited Budget” a fee seminar providing unbiased advice for first-time buyers who aren’t sure if they can afford to buy in the Berkeley area. Held at 180B 4th St. For reservations call 540-7808.

“The Gifts of Grief” an educational documentary about the transformational power of loss at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Suggested donation $20. 547-5004. www.giftsofgrief.com

California College of the Arts Open House Prospective students can tour studios, meet faculty, and view student work. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 5212 Broadway, Oakland. 594-3712.

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. The class is taught by Rosie Linsky, who at age 72, has practiced yoga for over 40 years. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800.

SUNDAY, FEB. 29

Early Morning Birdwalk at Tilden Nature Area at 8 a.m. Once every four years we get to go birding on this day. Every new bird you see counts double for your life bird list. 525-2233.

Leap Year at Tilden Nature Area. Learn about the history of Leap Day, with calendar customs and folklore from around the world. From 2 to 4 p.m. 525-2233.

Save The Bay is seeking volunteers who are passionate about the environment and have some paddling experience in canoes and/or sea kayaks to be volunteer guides for our on-the-water outings program, Discover The Bay. Sign up to assist with fun, inspiring weekend adventures on San Francisco Bay, exploring the hidden gems of the Bay region and watershed. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free. For more information, contact Jessica Parsons, Outings Coordinator, at 452-9261, or jparsons@savesfbay.org

Fred Lupke: A Celebration of His Life and Work from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Community Room, Third Floor, Main Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck.

“Patriots Act: Fighting the Good Fight - The Next Generation” Annual Reunion of The Veterans & Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at 1 p.m. at Calvin Simmons Theater, 10 Tenth St. Oakland. Speakers include Peter Glazer, Medea Benjamin, Bruce Barthol and members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Tickets are $30, and are available from 548-3088 or at the door. Proceeds will go to MoveOn.org

“Regional Transportation 101” a presentation sponsored by Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation, a 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Main Library, Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 652-9462.

National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. the first Monday of each month at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. 287-8948.

Neighborhood Watch Monthly Meeting at the Public Safety Building, 2100 MLK, Jr. Way from 6:30 to 8 p.m. (Late comers enter through jail door.) Block Captains are especially invited but anyone interested in starting a neighborhood program is welcome. Refreshments will be served. Sponsored by the Berkeley Safe Neighborhoods Committee (BSNC). For more information please call BPD Community Services Bureau at 981-5808.

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthing at 1:15 p.m. every Monday at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170.

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425.

ONGOING

Family Activist Resource Center A small group of East Bay parents is meeting monthly to set up a drop-in center where parents and caregivers can come with their children and do their political work while their children are cared for in a creative, respectful and nurturing manner. For information on the next meeting, contact Erica at ericadavid@earthlink.net or call 841-3204.

Auditions for Showtime at the Apollo will be held Sat. March 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Whether you’re part of a gospel group, a chorus line, a barbershop quartet, or a jazz ensemble; if you’re a magician, a female impersonator or a one-man band; if you’ve dreamed of thousands applauding your talent at the piano, tuba or didgeridoo, you’ll have your shot at the “Big Time.” Amateur performers and groups wishing to audition may call Laura Abrams at 642-0212 or e-mail apollo@calperfs.berkeley.edu to receive an audition application and to schedule an audition.

Berkeley Rhinos Rugby Team is inviting interested high school athletes to join. Practices are Tues. and Thurs. 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Gabe's Field. The season goes from February through May. Call Coach Keir Paasch for information, 847-1453.

Starbucks Grants for Giving is offering $375,000 to local non-profits in Berkeley and other East Bay cities. Eligibility and application information can be obtained from any Northern California Starbucks location, by visiting www.starbucks.com/

grantsforgiving or by calling 1-866-535-GIVE.

CITY MEETINGS

City Council meets Tues., Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. with a Special Meeting at 5 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.

We are writing to express our sadness at the County of Alameda’s refusal to grant us a marriage license. As long-term residents of Berkeley, having owned a house here (and paid property and income taxes) together for 11 years, and as a couple in a long-term, loving relationship of over 15 years, we had hoped that our relationship could be legally recognized through marriage by the County of Alameda and the State of California. But on Feb. 19, we were denied this recognition by the county clerk of Alameda when we were refused a marriage license.

Legally sanctioned marriage seems to us to be a fundamental right, not unlike the right to vote or own property. That one group of citizens of our state and our country is currently denied this right is a sad injustice.

Rebecca Freed

Jane Musser

EDITOR’S NOTE: Several attorneys have written to remind us that mayors of cities can’t usually issue marriage licenses in California, as our editorial for Feb. 17 suggested they might. San Francisco is an exception, since it’s both a city and a county. Counties usually issue marriage licenses, so East Bay residents who want to be married on their home turf should try to persuade county registrars to cooperate.

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YES ON PROP. 56

Editors, Daily Planet:

Yes on Prop. 56, to prevent future budgets from being held hostage by the state legislature’s radical anti-tax faction. We can’t allow a selfish minority to destroy California’s once-great public education system just to provide tax breaks for California’s wealthiest individuals and corporations. Good public education, transportation, and police, fire, and environmental protection improve the economy and quality of life for all Californians. Reinstatement of the top tax bracket is vastly preferable to burdening our children with huge bond debt and millions of dollars in interest.

Charlene M. Woodcock

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MEASURE 2

Editors, Daily Planet:

Michael Katz’s commentary on the AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit plan (Daily Planet, Feb. 17-19) was certainly lacking insight into what Measure 2 can provide the residents of Berkeley and Alameda County. Measure 2 is hardly “pork barrel” because it gives money to projects that affect all nine counties in the Bay Area. Additionally, the projects laid out in Measure 2 go to transit projects that would continue to help alleviate traffic on some of the Bay Area’s most congested roads.

In his commentary he stated that Measure 2 would “widen the Caldecott Tunnel, which would dump more cars onto Berkeley streets.” How exactly would it do this, Mr. Katz? If anything, the widening of the Caldecott would take cars off of Berkeley and North Oakland streets. Currently these cars end up on surface streets in an attempt to avoid traffic on Highway 24. With another bore there would be less congestion on 24 and cars would be much more likely to take the freeway and not city streets.

Residents of Alameda County and the Bay Area have continually ranked traffic as the number one problem in the region. The Bay Area has the dubious honor of being ranked second in the nation behind Los Angeles for the most time we spend in our cars, commuting to and from work. These projects are the key to beginning to solve our congestion problems.

Chris Douglas

Oakland

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RACIAL CRITERIA

Editors, Daily Planet:

Recently, four members of the school board continued to waste education funds and the future of our children by disregarding California law and the Pacific Legal Foundation lawsuit by including race in assigning students to Berkeley schools. When they lose this lawsuit BUSD will be liable for the legal fees of the Pacific Legal Foundation as well.

As an African American man, the issue is not the color of my skin. The issue is equality of education, and the achievement gap. African American children in this school district are on the bottom of the achievement scale. Simply getting certain numbers of children together does nothing to address the achievement gap. Sixty-five percent of African American children leave the eighth grade in Berkeley at a sixth grade reading and math level. The school board’s desire to have a black child sit next to a white child doesn’t do the black child any good. When that black child fails the high school proficiency exam, or cannot enter college, that child is consigned to a life of menial, entry-level jobs. The primary job for BUSD is education, and in that the school board has failed black children.

For three years I labored on the Student Assignment Advisory Committee, addressing the issue of how children should be assigned to elementary schools in Berkeley. I participated because the assignment plan for Berkeley touched every child and every elementary school. By making assignment address the equality of achievement, we would be benefiting every child. Instead, the school board, with the exception of Shirley Issel, decided that race was paramount to academic education.

I’ve been treated as a nigger because I’m black, and what I want for myself, my children and all children—black, brown and white—is a quality education. The school board should concentrate on educating children and leave the color of my skin alone.

Lee Berry

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INCUMBENT PROTECTION

Editors, Daily Planet:

Under Measure H the leading candidate for mayor, city council or auditor receiving at least 40 percent of the votes would avoid a runoff election. Under current law the leading candidate needs a minimum of 45 percent of the votes to avoid a runoff. Why the proposed change?

There was no outcry from the citizens of Berkeley for this change. The proposal was generated by the city council for one reason: to make it harder to defeat an incumbent. The reality is that almost every incumbent untouched by personal scandal can get at least 40 percent of the vote. Even if an unpopular incumbent is opposed by at least two significant candidates running real campaigns it is likely that the opposition candidates will still be unable to prevent the incumbent from getting 40 percent of the vote. Sixty per cent of the voters in a council district can be effectively disenfranchised by the 40 percent of the voters who favor the incumbent.

Berkeley citizens often criticize the city council for not working together. However, when their own incumbency is at stake the councilmembers could not be more collaborative. Measure H was approved unanimously at the Nov. 25 council meeting with no discussion. The motivation behind Measure H is so transparent that councilmember Gordon Wozniak both signed the ballot argument in favor of Measure H and also signed the ballot argument opposing Measure I (instant runoff voting) because instant runoff voting does not require a majority of the votes.

Bob Migdal

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NO DOGS

Editors, Daily Planet:

As humorously reported by Carol Denney (“Cops Just Want to Have Dogs,” Daily Planet, Feb. 17-19), Berkeley Police have proposed obtaining German shepherds as part of their front line arsenal against crime. However, there’s nothing humorous about using dogs to hunt for human beings. It’s barbaric.

Threatening a human being with dog bites is what the Nazis and Southern racists did. German shepherd police dogs in Berkeley would be a giant step

backward.

Among the reasons the police have offered to justify obtaining two German shepherds is: The dogs will help in finding missing persons with Alzheimer’s disease. I can just imagine the terror a confused senior would feel confronted with a German shepherd wielded by a cop. Most likely, the dogs will be used to rout out the homeless from hidden sleeping places and intimidate African American youth.

Equally alarming, the language of the German shepherd proposal states that dog use will be justified when an officer believes his/her life is in danger as well as when a suspect is resisting arrest. These provisions invite unjustified usage/abuse. For example, after 40 years of main stream civil disobedience, the police still can’t to this day distinguish between not cooperating with one’s arrest and resisting arrest. In addition, cops filled with fear and adrenaline at a crime scene will transmit those feelings onto their dogs. Get the picture?

Presently, the police carry guns, pepper spray, and batons. They believe they still don’t have enough. What’s next after dogs, tanks?

The best way to enhance police safety is to train police in the art of staying focused, alert, and calm in dramatic situations. In other words, mind power, not brute power. Why not apply the dedicated money for front line usage in martial arts training?

As our Federal government hypes up the rhetoric on terror and fear, Berkeley doesn’t need additional symbols of force patrolling our streets or riding in police cars.

If you think that police dogs are unacceptable in Berkeley, please inform your councilmember and especially Mayor Bates, who is gung-ho for the proposal.

Maris Arnold

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INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING

Editors, Daily Planet:

Measure 1 on the March ballot will replace Berkeley’s December runoff elections with instant runoff voting (IRV). IRV is a more democratic way of electing our government leaders. Turnout in Berkeley’s December runoffs has declined for all eight runoffs since 1986 by an average of 28 percent. The overwhelming weight of evidence from both local and national examples reveals that runoff elections typically lead to lower voter turnout. This is not good for democracy.

IRV allows voters to rank their first, second, and third choices among candidates, and if no candidate receives a majority of the first choices, then the “runoff rankings” are used to determine the winner. As a bonus, we will save tens of thousands of dollars because taxpayers will not have to pay for unnecessary runoffs, and candidates will not have to raise money for a second election. Also, IRV encourages civil campaigns, since candidates will want the to be the second choice of those who support their rivals.

I urge a yes vote on Measure I.

Mim Hawley

City Councilmember, District 5

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PRESERVING BLOOD HOUSE

Editors, Daily Planet:

The Zoning Adjustment Board should reject the proposed development at 2526 Durant Ave. (the Blood House site) and instead support the preservation alternative for the site proposed by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.

The developer’s proposal would destroy a historic resource. The Blood House is one of the few early houses remaining in the area immediately south of campus, and it gives some sense of the original character of the area.

The developer’s proposal would be dangerous for pedestrians and detrimental to traffic flow. Because it has on-site parking, it will attract residents

who own cars, increasing congestion. The curb-cut will make Durant Avenue less friendly to pedestrians. Cars exiting from the drive onto Durant will interfere with traffic flow and possibly cause accidents.

The preservation alternative saves the Blood House and also provides added units in a second building on the site. This is consistent with the draft Southside Plan, which says the city should “preserve and enhance the significant architectural and historic resources of the area.”

The preservation alternative does not include parking on site, so it will not interfere with pedestrian and traffic flow. No parking is required here by C-T zoning. To ensure that this housing would attract only tenants who do not own cars, the Zoning Board should require that residents of this project not be able to purchase RPP permits.

There is considerable demand for car-free housing near campus. A 1999 ASUC survey found that 88 percent of students would like to live close to campus without a car. Of students who have cars, 78 percent would prefer to give up their cars if they could live close to campus.

By allowing more students to live close to campus and walk to school, the preservation alternative for this site would not only provide much needed housing but would also reduce traffic congestion and parking problems in the south campus area.

Charles Siegel

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NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Editors, Daily Planet:

Jeanne Burdette in her letter to Mayor Bates printed in the Feb.y 13-16 issue of the Daily Planet states that I have a conflict of interest working as an administrative aide for Councilmember Linda Maio while also serving on the Berkeley Waterfront Commission. According to the city attorney, no such conflict exists, nor are there any legal prohibitions for a council administrative aide to sit on Berkeley’s boards and commissions.

Ms. Burdette also objects to “a motion to move $100,000 of Marina monies to downtown” that she asserts I made at a recent meeting of the Waterfront Commission. I believe Ms. Burdette is referring to a discussion among Waterfront Commissioners during the meeting held on Jan. 14 concerning changes to the Marina Fund. Park and Waterfront staff, in response to the city manager's request for budget reduction proposals of 20 percent from alldepartments, had recommended these changes. No motions were made during this discussion by me or any other member of the Waterfront Commission. At one point in the discussion, I raised the possibility of finding a way to help the city in its current budget crisis by finding a way to contribute $100,000 from the Marina Fund to the General Fund. I also said during the discussion that I thought it likely that there were legal obstacles that would prevent such a transfer. My proposal was found wanting by my fellow commissioners, but I don’t see this as a reason not to bring the idea forward for discussion. Incidentally, there was support from Waterfront Commissioners for some costs being transferred from other funds to the Marina Fund including a $3,483 reduction to the General Fund.

The Waterfront Commission has a record of seeing the Marina Fund in the larger context of the entire city’s budget. Several years ago the Parks and Recreation Commission recommended and the city council approved funds to pay overhead for services such as bookkeeping and legal advice would no longer have to be paid from the parks tax. The Waterfront Commission discussed making a similar recommendation to the city council, but decided such a policy was not in the best interest of the city and didn’t make the recommendation. In fiscal year 2003, the Marina Fund paid $234,000 in indirect cost reimbursements to the General Fund.

It is worthwhile noting that the members of the Waterfront Commission, including myself, are generally very protective of the Marina Fund. For years, many berthers at the Marina believed that “downtown” was taking money from the Marian Fund and placing it in the General Fund. Working with staff over the past several years to accurately portray the financial condition of the Marina Fund has virtually eliminated these complaints. The process of clarifying the status of the Marina Fund led to the development of a five-year budget-planning window, now adopted by all of the city’s departments. The recently published Marina Plan contains a 20-year planning window for capital projects, a strategy we hope to see adopted throughout the city’s departments. For many years the General Fund was inappropriately depositing interest earned from the Marina Fund to the General Fund. After several recommendations to the city council from the Waterfront Commission, this practice was eventually stopped. Interest earned in the Marina Fund account is now deposited in the Marina Fund. Another budget strategy developed by the Waterfront Commission that we hope will be adopted by other city departments is the establishment of a reserve fund for future capital projects. Reserve funds in excess of $1,000,000 have been set aside to dredge the Marina next year and to complete renovation projects that will keep the Berkeley Marina a viable community asset without placing a burden on the General Fund.

Brad Smith

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IN SUPPORT OF STRIKERS

Editors, Daily Planet:

In support of striking workers in Southern California, I have stopped shopping at Safeway and Albertsons. I urge other members of the community to do the same.

Carla Blank introduces her new novel, “Rediscovering America” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861.

MUSIC AND DANCE

International Gospel Music Spectacular, a showcase of choirs and soloists from East Bay African American Churches at 8 p.m. at International House, Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft Way. Tickets are $5 at the door. The concert will be preceeded by a buffet at 5:30 p.m. for $8.50.

Duck Baker and Peppino D’Agostino, guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50 in advance, $20.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org

Strings Attached: What We Live, featuring John Schott at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org

FRIDAY, FEB. 27

THEATER

“The Evolution from Africa” An African American history lesson given through spoken word, music, song, dance and dialogue, at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School Auditorium 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $1-$3. All proceeds go directly to the afterschool programs.

Aurora Theatre, “Man of Destiny” by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Barbara Oliver at 8 p.m. Through March 7. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

A Traveling Jewish Theater, “Times Like These” at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $20-$28. 415-285-8080. www.atjt.com

Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater, “Street Soldier The Play” a benefit for Omega Boys Club and celebrating Black History month at 2:30 and 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 1-800-SOLDIER.

“De Aquí P’ Allá Con Clave” a new work of Cuban music and dance directed by Jesus Diaz, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. tickets are $16 in advance, $20 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org

World Heart Beat, a benefit concert and dance party in support of Berkeley’s Interfaith Pagan Pride Parade and Celebration with Stephen Kent, composer and multi-instrumentalist, at 8 p.m. at 2525 Eighth St., at Dwight Way. Cost is $13-$20, sliding scale. All ages welcome. 649-6051. www.paganparade.org

From Monument to Masses, Caesura Free Verse, The Yellow Press, The Drogues at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926.

Drunken Cat Paws at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.

SUNDAY, FEB. 29

CHILDREN

“Dragons Never Laugh” puppet adventures with Princess Moxie at 2 and 4 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $4 for children $6 for adults. 644-2204.

Picture Book Circle at the Magnes Museum Children ages 4-8 and their families will read and look at classic, illustrated books and discuss Jewish values. Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz, the acclaimed author of Inside, Picture Books, developed the program exclusively for the Magnes. The six Sundays is $50 per child for members and $60 for non-members at meets at 2 p.m. To register please call 549-6950. www.magnes.org

THEATER

A Traveling Jewish Theater: “Times Like These” at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $20-$28. 415-285-8080. www.atjt.com

Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater, “Street Soldier The Play” a benefit for Omega Boys Club and celebrating Black History month at 3 and 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 1-800-SOLDIER.

FILM

Victor Sjostrom: “The Scarlet Letter” at 2 p.m. and “Under the Red Robe” at 4:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Chamber Music Sundaes The Navarro Piano Trio performs Schubert, Bruch, and Danielpur at 3:15 p.m. at St John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$18, available at the door. 415-584-5946.

“3, 4, 6, 8 Hands, 1 & 2 Pianos” presented by the Holy Names College Music Department with works by Alkan, Rachmaninoff, Schickele, Schubert and Smetana at 3 p.m. at Regents’ Theatre, Valley Center for the Performing Arts, Holy Names College, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $6-$12 available at the door.

56th Annual Festival of the Oaks, a day long celebration of internationsl music and dance sponsored by Laney College Dance Dept., Berkeley Folk Dance Club and California Folk Dance Federation. Held at the Laney College gym from 10 a.m. For information call 527-2177.

Flamenco Open Stage with Alicia and Roberto Zamora at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com

Berkeley developer Panoramic Interests owes the city another $200,000 in taxes on four properties the firm built and manages—and the city’s Finance Department is implementing procedures to ensure that such properties don’t slip under the tax radar again.

Such was the gist of the “escaped” tax assessments update Finance Director Fran David gave to the city council at last Tuesday’s work session. David described “escaped” taxes as taxes mistakenly not charged to Berkeley properties.

David said her department is also reviewing a project by an unnamed builder that could net the city an additional $37,000 in previously unbilled taxes.

The council ordered the escaped taxes report last October after the announcement by former mayoral aide Barbara Gilbert that Panoramic’s Gaia Building—one of the most controversial developments in the city in recent years—didn’t appear to be paying certain Berkeley property fees and assessments, even though it had been occupied for two years.

A follow-up story in the Berkeley Daily Planet revealed that a second Panoramic property—the Berkleyan—hadn’t been billed for some Berkeley taxes since its permanent certificate of occupancy had been issued three years before. A Finance Department staff member later said that the Berkeleyan’s assessments had “[fallen] through the cracks.” There was never any allegation that Panoramic, headed by developer Patrick Kennedy, had failed to pay any county or city taxes for which it had been billed.

While some city staff members have called the amount of “escaped” Berkeley taxes small in relation to the city’s $110 million to $120 million annual budget, the issue became a potent and (to city government representatives) embarrassing symbol during last fall’s debate over the since-discarded fire parcel tax.

At the time, David revealed that the Gaia Building had escaped the taxes because Berkeley assessed them only after issuing a permanent certificate of occupancy—while the Gaia was operating under a continuing temporary permit. That loophole is now being closed, with both commercial and residential properties now triggering tax assessments as soon as the city deems them suitable to occupy.

David also reported that 200 potentially untaxed properties, mostly-residential and less than 3,000 square feet each, remain to be investigated. Most are so small, she said, that even if they are billable, they “will likely yield very little increase in revenue.”

The report also referred to more than 40 properties improperly put on the “OO” properties list. Properties normally appearing on the untaxable “00” list are vacant lots, parking lots, or are buildings under construction. Assessment amounts improperly assigned to the list are currently being calculated and research continues on another 50 properties.

David will present a follow-up escaped assessments report to the council in May.›

The March 2 election date is fast-approaching and many Berkeley voters have already received their absentee ballots. So many of you have called me and asked my opinion about Propositions 57 and 58, that I am distributing the remarks I gave on this subject to the Berkeley Democratic Club earlier this month.

Prop. 57, the Economic Recovery Bond Act, authorizes the state to sell $15 billion in bonds to pay for operations, not the bricks and mortar that you normally would expect from the selling of bonds. These bonds are to be paid back over a period of 9 to 14 years from one fourth of a penny from the state sales tax. A range is given on the number of years to pay back the debt because as the economy improves, the total amount of sales tax increases. the amount available for payback increases, and the payback period decreases. As the economy slows or limps along, the amount of sales tax goes down, and the payback period takes longer.

Prop. 58 amends the California Constitution to require the state to approve balanced budgets each year in the future. Currently, the Constitution requires the governor to propose a balanced budget annually, but does not require that the final budget approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor be balanced. Prop. 58 also requires that the state set up a reserve using from 1-3 percent of the state’s general fund revenues until the reserve reaches either $8 billion or five percent of the state’s General Fund whichever is greater. The purpose of this reserve is to smooth out future dips in revenue so that there aren’t sudden changes to programs and services.

Both Prop. 57 and 58 must be approved by the voters in order for either to take effect.

Berkeley’s acting city manager, Phil Kamlarz, has called borrowing to pay past debt is “lousy policy.” We can all agree on that, and hopefully a majority of us will agree that the financial situation California faces todayleaves us without choice. Just like too many ordinary people, the state has been living with unbalanced budgets—spending more than their income. I am not here to fix blame or point fingers. There is plenty of blame to be assigned to many parties, but what has happened, has happened. Now, we need to focus on getting out of this mess, so let me give you five compelling reasons why we need to approve Propositions 57 and 58 on March 2.

1) Without voter approval of 57 and 58, the state will be out of money in June of 2004.

2) The state, which already takes millions from local governments to balance their budget, will take even more, maybe double the current amount. The state has taken $4 million from Berkeley alone every yearsince the early ‘90s, $6 million now. The state taking more will clearly be a disaster for our own local situation. They need to give our money back to us!

3) Even if bankrupt, the state will still have to function, so California will have to turn to “stand-by agreements.” These are nasty financial instruments that carry very high interest rates which depending on various factors, could increase California’s debt to $30 billion by 2005!

4) We can’t rely upon last year’s $11 billion bond debt financing plan approved by the Legislature last year because that action is being taken to court by the Pacific Legal Foundation on the basis it wasn’t approved by the voters. Don’t be mistaken, this $11 billion is included in the $15 billion in Prop. 57. There isn’t an extra $11 billion out there. Several legal experts believe that the Pacific Legal Foundation court challenge will succeed.

5) If we were to raise income tax rates on those with incomes over $200,000, raise taxes on alcohol and tobacco and raise the sales tax by one cent, we will generate about $7 billion, not even one-half of the $15 billion debt.

Some have said that the whole debt could be wiped out simply by raising income taxes on California’s wealthiest residents. Income taxes are not retroactive. The earliest an income tax increase could apply would be next year, maybe longer depending on how long it takes to work out. This, at best will be after the state runs out of money and has to rely on deep cuts to services, funds from local and county government and those costly stand-by agreements. Also, increases to income tax are also subject to all of the withholding and credits allowable for various reasons, so it’s hard to determine the full impact without a great deal more of study.

This is far too important a matter to play around with. I am very concerned that our elected leadership at all levels, with the exception of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, has been silent on this issue. So, it is time, for us ordinary citizens to speak up. An interesting analogy that we can all relate to, and use as an explanation to friends and neighbors, is the ordinary citizen who lives beyond his means and gets into wrenching debt. Any responsible credit counselor would advisor this person to consolidate debt, re-finance with lower interest rates, make regular paybacks and commit to responsible behavior in the future. This is exactly what Propositions 57 and 58 do.

Sure, approving Props 57 and 58 will not solve our budget woes. We still must face living within our means, trimming state expenditures (I suggest eliminating the State giving brand new luxury cars to legislators and paying people over $100,000 to sit on a state board), and raising new revenues (I suggest increase income taxes on our wealthiest residents). Yes, it’s lousy policy to borrow to get out of debt, but it’s the responsible, practical and effective thing to do right now. Vote yes on Propositions 57 and 58 on the March ballot.

Yesterday, while I was attending a memorial service at the University of California, a tragedy was happening in my own neighborhood. A happy-go-lucky teenager rode a go-cart down an alley onto Bancroft Avenue, right into the path of an oncoming truck. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Highland Hospital. Sixteen-year-old Miguel Caicedo was the beloved cousin of the African American student who walks my dog, and he used to pass by my house frequently.

I live two blocks away from the accident scene in a quiet, racially diverse, residential neighborhood in southwest Berkeley. On Saturday evening I walked to the spot where the accident happened. It was marked by a photo poster of Miguel (known as “Snoopy”) tacked to a telephone pole, surrounded by flowers, candles, and dozens of quiet, sad-eyed friends, relatives and neighbors. Many of them, like Miguel, were teenagers of color, wearing the predominantly red and black clothes that had worried some of my neighbors recently. There had been a steady presence at the site for more than 24 hours. Earlier there had been outbursts of anger at the police for their handling of the accident (details of which are still unclear) and an incident involving some gang-like provocation, but generally it has been quiet, respectful, tearful.

At about 7 p.m. the family arrived and an informal, impromptu memorial began. His mother was barely able to speak, but his aunt, clearly a neighborhood earth mother, begged the youngsters not to stop coming around; she would still cook for them and watch out for them. Miguel, she said, had been turning his life around, and was well on his way to success. He was in school and had a job at the nearby after-school center, Berkeley Youth Alternatives. Miguel’s only fault seemed to be youthful over-enthusiasm; the many loving tributes on the poster board on the sidewalk attested to his warm-heartedness. His aunt’s message, repeated by other speakers, was strong and clear and mainly directed to the teenagers: make the outcome of this tragedy positive; make your own lives worthwhile; don’t make trouble or hate others; study; love your family, and each other.

Looking around, she celebrated the diversity of the mourners and begged us all to work together and not let color divide us. A male relative led a prayer, quoting Martin Luther King and John Donne; a beautifully written, heartrending poem by a young friend was read; we all held hands and observed a moment of silence; a young woman broke into a chorus of “Amazing Grace.”

I don’t suppose anyone really believes this teenage community will become a model generation overnight. A realistic message from Miguel’s grandmother was relayed, telling the teenagers they could come to the funeral in their street clothes, but please, just this once, pull up those baggy pants. I think they will. And maybe more. The rain that began to fall could not quench the hope springing from the sadness.

In its Feb. 13-16 edition, the Berkeley Daily Planet printed a letter to the editor written against me, an African American progressive activist, by a conservative pro-Israel individual named Dan Spitzer.

That letter contained an absolutely false allegation about a statement that Spitzer purported I made while engaged in a public protest at the Feb. 10 speech by right-wing, pro-Israel media pundit Daniel Pipes. Spitzer pathetically claimed that I screamed, “You’re all a bunch of filthy Jewish liars.”

As the anti-racist, anti-Zionist, Jewish-American essayist and public lecturer Tim Wise noted, “[Zionists] can’t be expected to place a very high premium on truth” and, obviously, no lie is too brazen.

As I understand it, it is general newspaper policy to refrain from printing an undocumented accusation such as a second-hand, unverified quote.

Of course, I did not say what Spitzer claimed, as many witnesses to the event can readily attest. In fact, it was I who urged the Daily Planet, in their published apology to me for printing Spitzer’s letter, to seek to obtain a recording of the event from Berkeley Hillel. Such a recording would directly demonstrate the falseness of his accusation.

My actual verbal protest against Pipes was only one voice amongst numerous others speaking out from both the campus and the community. Pipes is a highly controversial and divisive figure, well-known as the American voice for the most reactionary anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim elements in the far right wing of Israel’s conservative Likud Party.

Pipes is also a founder of CampusWatch, a right-wing ideological organization that engages in McCarthyist intimidations of academics. It attacks the very free speech and academic freedom that Berkeley Hillel pretends to champion in this case: CW attacks, particularly, those who politically criticize Israel or Zionism (its fundamentalist, apartheid ideology), or for their so-called “un-Americanism.”

Pipes has taken the position that the Middle East peace process should be abandoned altogether. He believes that Israel should pursue the most extreme military action until the Palestinians are totally crushed as a viable, indigenous people and abjectly surrender all claims to their homeland and self-determination. He also characterizes the vast majority of Muslims and Arabs—internationally and in the Muslim and Arab-American community—as either actual or potential terrorists.

Given his background, it is shocking and shameful that his Hillel sponsors—who are keen to count (typically including any political criticism of Israel) every single incidence of hate speech against Bay Area Jews—would invite a hate speaker like Daniel Pipes to campus.

This invitation prompted a Feb. 10 formal letter to the Daily Californian, signed by many Jews and others in the university community, objecting to Hillel’s invitation to Pipes in the strongest possible terms. The letter described Pipes’ remarks as “vilely xenophobic” and “echo[ing] messages directed against Jews in the past.” The signatories of the letter included Professor Emerita Bluma Goldstein, who lost more than 30 members of her family in the Holocaust, but who nonetheless morally rejects the imposition of nationalist Zionism in Palestine.

In a highly visible, nonviolent form of potential civil disobedience, with the voluntary expectation of being escorted out, I proclaimed to Pipes individually, stating: “You’re a racist Jew [implicitly noting the irony] and you should be ashamed of yourself. Gandhi opposed Zionism. Nelson Mandela opposes Zionism. Desmond Tutu opposes Zionism. Paul Robeson opposed Zionism. You’re the Jewish David Duke!”

Thus I did not—contrary to Spitzer’s false quote—engage in invective or derogatory remarks about Jewish people as a group. I noted Pipes’ Jewishness to emphasize the tragic irony of such a person engaging in the same sort of racist and bigoted behavior which Jews themselves have suffered under throughout history, and which goes against the traditions and philosophy of the Jewish faith.

As for right-wing Spitzer duplicitously invoking Mario Savio: First, Savio was not a racist or a bigot. Second, Savio championed the meaningful free speech rights of those who politically dissent—those without state or corporate media backing—to speak truth to power; he didn’t champion power’s right to free speech, which it inherently has. Third, Savio said that when a system becomes so heinously oppressive, people of conscience must throw themselves upon the gears of that onerous system. In a small but visible way, that’s what we protesters did. Savio also said that protest should be principled, not necessarily polite.

Not one word of Pipes’ prepared speech went unspoken: He still had his (otherwise media-ubiquitous) “free speech.” No protester attempted to actually stop him from speaking. But we people of conscience will not let an evident racist/bigot like Pipes carry on without inconvenient interruptions for truth.

On Feb. 17, the Berkeley Daily Planet apologized to Joseph Anderson “for any problems” the publication of Dan Spitzer’s Feb. 13 letter to the editor “might have created for him.”

I in turn regret that you apologized to Mr. Anderson because I, the speaker at the UC Berkeley event in question on Feb. 10, clearly heard verbatim exactly what Mr. Spitzer reported, namely Mr. Anderson yelling repeatedly “You’re all a bunch of filthy Jewish liars.”

Daniel Pipes

Editor’s Note: The controversy over who said what at a Daniel Pipes lecture on the UC campus reminds us of the movie Rashomon, which told the story of an incident through the eyes of several different witnesses who saw what happened in different ways. We originally printed a letter in which one attendee recounted his recollection of what was said by another attendee, after which the second person wrote in to deny that he had said what the first letter reported. At the request of the second attendee, we’ve asked for any tapes which were made of the incident, but none have been produced. In this issue we are printing the second person’s recollection, as well as a brief letter from the lecturer regarding his own memory of the event, and that’s all the farther we’re going to go with this discussion, even though we’ve had several more letters from witnesses with a variety of perceptions of what happened. In the future we request that our correspondents refrain from making specific accusations against individuals who are not public figures.

One of the most prolific non-profit developers in Berkeley is calling it quits, at least temporarily. And at least from non-profit developing.

Ali Kashani, director and founder of Affordable Housing Associates (AHA) announced last week that effective June 30, he will resign from the organization he founded 11 years ago. With more than 400 units of affordable housing in Berkeley and 113 in the pipeline, AHA has emerged as the city’s leader in new affordable housing development.

“It’s better for AHA to get new blood and leadership not as jaded as I am,” Kashani said. He said he was frustrated by the “meat grinder” of Berkeley development and decided that after 20 years in affordable housing, he had achieved his goals and wanted to step aside.

Kashani owns a share in the building housing Longs Drugs on San Pablo Avenue and the former Gorman & Son Furniture store on Telegraph Avenue. But while friends expect him to delve into private development Kashani said that contrary to rumors, he had no other stake in private Berkeley developments. He added, however, that he wouldn’t pass up a good opportunity. “I’m not tired of developing,” he said. “I just wanted a break.”

Supporters and competitors said they were saddened by Kashani’s resignation announcement.

“It’s a tragic loss for affordable housing,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. “We’re going to have trouble replacing such a passionate and effective leader.”

Dan Sawislak, executive director for RCD, said, despite adding competition for scarce funding, AHA has been good for his group because, “they made politics in town more favorable for affordable housing.”

“He’s someone who has all the skills,” said Berkeley Housing Director Steve Barton, who recently put AHA in charge of managing the city’s 75 public housing units. “Some people know the construction side, some people know finance side, but Ali had mastered both.”

Colleagues said Kashani had also mastered Berkeley politics. When he formed AHA, non-profit development was a divisive issue. The city’s largest developer, Resources for Community Development (RCD), was seen as an extension of the city council’s progressive wing in a council bitterly divided between progressives and moderates.

To bridge the council divide, Kashani appointed both moderates and progressives to his board.

Though Kashani deftly handled the city council, he has not been immune from criticism the recent controversies over high-density development in Berkeley. AHA’s planned four-story senior housing project at Sacramento Street and Dwight Way remains held up in litigation after neighbors sued the city for violating its General Plan in approving the 40-unit project. The suit is now before an appeals court judge, after the city won at trial.

Howie Muir, a plaintiff in that lawsuit, chastised Berkeley for showing favoritism to Kashani. “The city was determined to let Ali have the project any way he wanted it before it even became public,” he said.

One of nine siblings from Tehran, Iran, Kashani arrived in Berkeley in 1979. After graduating with a degree in engineering from UC Berkeley in 1984, he decided to stay, rather than return to his war-torn homeland. He became involved with non-profit Berkeley-Oakland Support Services which led him to affordable housing, working first as a construction consultant and then as an employee for RCD, his future competitor.

AHA Board President Harry Le Grande said finding a suitable replacement for Kashani would be difficult and the board was considering adding a Chief Financial Officer position to assume some of the load. “We have a strong staff, but whoever comes in will have to establish relationships with our lenders,” he said.

Kashani said longtime employee Kevin Zwick would be considered for the top job, along with candidates from outside the organization. He didn’t think the change in leadership would affect the three present projects AHA has planned for Berkeley.

In an escalation of the labor dispute that has engulfed southern California for almost five months, the California Labor Federation this week announced an official boycott of all Safeway stores throughout the state. Safeway is the largest of the three supermarkets at which Southern California workers have been striking for several weeks.

In Berkeley, strike supporters have already been holding Wednesday informational picketing at the city’s only Safeway at Rose Street and Shattuck Avenue for the past few weeks. The Berkeley pickets have been organized by Direct Action to Stop the War and the Labor Committee for Peace and Justice.

Besides supporting the southern California workers, Bay Area strike supporters say they are also preparing for what could be similar union battles when local grocery contracts expire this summer and fall.

According to AFL-CIO spokesperson J.B. Tengco, the boycott will officially start this Saturday when a host of labor unions, community organizations and religious groups begin a campaign to discourage communities from shopping at Safeway stores. Tengco said the statewide action is meant to pressure the three supermarket chains to sign fair contracts for the 70,000 plus workers down south who have been on strike or locked out over proposed contract changes that union representatives say will devastate their health benefits.

Under the current Southern California Safeway contract, employers pay four dollars into a pool to fund health care coverage for every hour a worker is on the job. The new Safeway proposal would cut the payout to $1.35 for new hires. That, workers say, would cause the entire health package to eventually crumble.

“They want to make as much money as possible because health care costs are going through the roof,” said Liz Perlman, from Direct Action to Stop the War.

The boycott will not be Northern California’s first glimpse of the strike. Several months ago a busload of workers came north and set up a picket in front of the Safeway at 51st street and Broadway in Oakland. Follow-up demonstrations and weekly pickets, like the one in Berkeley, have also sprung up in cities around the Bay Area.

“There was a need to do more,” said Perlman. “Safeway and the grocery industry have launched a war.”

Perlman and those supporting the strike say that if Safeway successfully negotiates a contract that forces workers to shoulder more of the health care costs, the trend could spread to other industries.

“Everyone is going to be looking at the standard set by this fight,” said Perlman. She added that support for the picketing has been strong. “People up here [in Berkeley] get it, they understand what is at stake.”

In Berkeley, organizers say at least one third of the shoppers who have come to the store during the picket have turned away. That percentage is expected to escalate now that the action has jumped from informational to a formal boycott.

According to organizers, the pickets around the bay and here in Berkeley will continue regularly until contracts are settled.›

Two people started fighting early Saturday morning at Center Street and Shattuck Avenue, police said. The combatants stopped fighting before police arrived, and no one was arrested.

Southside Fight

Two juveniles got into a fight Friday morning in the area of Stuart and Telegraph, said Officer Joe Okies. He did not have further information about the incident.

Westside Slap

Someone was slapped early Friday morning on the 1500 block of San Pablo Avenue, police said. The Berkeley Fire Department was called in to tend to the victim, who complained of pain. Police searched the immediate area, but failed to find the culprit. f

Having successfully navigated the potential roadblocks at Berkeley’s Transportation Commission, AC Transit’s controversial plan to keep its buses from getting bottlenecked on Berkeley’s streets is now set for environmental review.

But before the bus agency begins its formal Environmental Impact Review (EIR) study of the impacts of overhauling Berkeley’s streetscape—including possible elimination of two lanes of car traffic on much of Telegraph Avenue and banishing cars altogether from the three blocks closest to campus—the Transportation Commission proposed some conditions to placate nervous neighbors and merchants.

At a packed public hearing Thursday, the commission voted unanimously to request that AC Transit perform additional traffic studies before implementing any proposal that eliminates car access.

Five years in the works and at least four years from completion, AC Transit is developing a Bus Rapid Transit System from Berkeley to San Leandro, funded by regional bond money and federal grants, that promises faster service, fewer stops and a drastically different street environment for Shattuck and Telegraph avenues. The proposed route would run east from the Downtown Berkeley BART to Telegraph, then on to Oakland and San Leandro.

AC Transit plans to study a variety of options that include ripping out the median on Shattuck Avenue to build two dedicated bus lanes and 80-foot bus stations on major city streets. Another proposal is to revert the now one-way Durant Avenue back to two-way, and then pair a dedicated bus lane on that street with a similar one on Bancroft Way. Most controversial is a pedestrian-transit mall on Telegraph from Bancroft to Haste Street and the elimination of two car lanes on Telegraph south of Dwight Way to make room for dedicated bus lanes.

A more modest version of the Bus Rapid Transit plan has already come to San Pablo Avenue. By installing “smart” traffic signals that give buses priority, cutting the number of stops and providing real-time arrival information, the corridor has gained 20 percent more riders and cut commute times, according to AC Transit Project Manager Jim Cunradi.

Those same improvements are already set for Telegraph and Shattuck, but AC Transit wants to study more ambitious plans they estimate would cut ten minutes off the commute between Berkeley and downtown Oakland, as well as increase ridership 30 to 40 percent.

Telegraph Avenue neighbors and merchants complain that the more ambitious plans—especially the dedicated bus lanes—will choke car traffic on Telegraph, divert many drivers through residential streets, and harm businesses along the three blocks closest to the UC Berkeley campus. To alleviate those concerns, the Transportation Commission authorized the formation of a subcommittee on the project to include neighbors, merchants and AC Transit officials, as well as a study to see if better bus service equaled fewer cars on Telegraph Avenue.

“This is an attempt to show the community we’re not going to run them over,” said commission chair Dean Metzger.

And while AC Transit Project Manager Cunradi said that it would be “tougher” for his agency to complete the project with the added mitigations, “we’ll do it.”

Though the two-county transportation agency is in charge of the project itself, Berkeley maintains power over its streets, giving it a veto power over any AC Transit proposal. The city does, however, have incentive to cooperate with AC Transit. In addition to faster bus service, the project offers the city a free Environmental Impact Report to study considerations outlined in its Southside Plan.

The environmental review is scheduled for completion by next winter.

Funding for the project remains uncertain. AC Transit has $23 million at its disposal from Ballot Measure E, but is counting on an additional $65 million from a March ballot initiative to raise Bay Bridge tolls to $3 to fund local transit projects. ›

With one of its more controversial decisions behind it—last week’s long-awaited vote on the North Berkeley Sprint facility—and difficult budget-cutting choices coming up, the Berkeley City Council will be lifting a light load at tonight’s meeting (Tuesday, Feb. 24).

There are only three items on the council’s Action Agenda: amendments to the off-street parking ordinance, an adjustment to requirements for appeals from the Zoning Adjustments Board, and a recommendation from the Citizens Humane Commission on changes in the city’s animal care budget.

Also of note on the agenda is a proclamation honoring the late disabled and progressive activist Fred Lupke.

On Wednesday the Police Review Commission is expected to offer a recommendation to the city council on proposed canine unit for the Berkeley Police Department. The PRC held three public hearings on the proposal, which seeks to use confiscated drug money to buy and train two German shepherds for the force.

Two controversial developments will return to the Zoning Adjustment Board on Thursday of this week (Feb. 26).

John DeClerq of TransAction Companies will once again seek a use permit for Library Gardens—a 176-unit apartment complex planned to rise just west of the Public Library at the current site of the 375-space Kittredge Street garage. DeClerq has added 124 parking spaces to the project since the ZAB rejected it last month because the permit request did not include any proposal to mitigate the expected loss of public parking.

Also on the ZAB’s Thursday agenda will be reconsideration of proposals to renovate or demolish the Blood House, a stuccoed-over Victorian at 2526 Durant Ave. In December, ZAB commissioners ordered developers Ruegg & Ellsworth back to the drawing board after ZAB concluded the company had not made a good faith effort to develop housing on the plot that incorporated the landmarked 19th century building. The developers insist any development that doesn’t demolish the building would be unfeasible.

An Alameda County Superior Court Judge is expected to rule next week on a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a Berkeley school desegregation plan. The plan assigns elementary students to schools based partly on race. After a 30 minute hearing last Friday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge James Richman declined to decide immediately on a motion filed by the Berkeley Unified School District to dismiss the suit.

The lawsuit was brought by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) on behalf of Berkeley resident Lorenzo Avila. PLF and Avila argue that the desegregation plan violates Proposition 209. That measure, passed by voters in 1996, precludes racial preferences or discrimination in public education, employment or contracting.

Since voters passed Proposition 209, the PLF has sought to chip away at school desegregation policies predicated on race. In 2002 the PLF won a similar case in the a state appeals court against the Huntington Beach Union School District.

In that case, the judge ruled that Huntington Beach’s transfer policy—which in one instance prohibited a white student from transferring out of a white-minority high school unless another white student could be found to take his place—violated Proposition 209.

The Berkeley desegregation plan originally required each school’s racial mix to come within five percent of the district-wide percentage. The plan was amended earlier this month to include socioeconomic factors and drop a requirement that students declare their race on a form used in the assignment process. However, PLF attorney John Findley said he would proceed with the case against the former plan to “show that it’s unconstitutional.”

During the proceedings Judge Richman acknowledged he was “bound” by the Huntington Beach case if applicable, but questioned if the Huntington school plan, which involved “race-based movement” of students, was similar to the Berkeley assignment plan.

After the hearing John Streeter, representing Berkeley Unified, said he “took heart” from Judge Richman’s sometimes-intense questioning. PLF’s Findley said that if Judge Richman sustained Berkeley Unified’s dismissal motion, PLF would appeal.›

A small majority of Haitian Americans believe Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide should remain in office despite an armed uprising and opposition protests demanding his resignation, a new poll shows.

Fifty-two percent of U.S. Haitians believed Aristide should remain in office. More than half of Haitian Americans also said Aristide should not step down because he was elected by an overwhelming majority in the Caribbean country’s last presidential election in 2000.

“They think he won the election fair and square,” says Sergio Bendixen, whose Miami-based firm Bendixen & Associates conducted the poll for NCM, a nationwide association of ethnic media. “They feel that if he resigns it will weaken the democracy.”

Gary Pierre-Pierre, a Haitian American, publishes the Haitian Times weekly in New York City and is a former New York Times reporter. He says he believes this is the first national poll ever of Haitian American opinion.

“It’s about time that people start asking us what we think,” says Pierre-Pierre. He acknowledges that Haitian Americans may “not have definitive answers” to Haiti’s crisis, but says that as a thriving immigrant community with strong ties to Haiti and intimate knowledge of its problems, they should be consulted.

Pierre-Pierre says that when President Clinton ordered 20,000 U.S. troops into Haiti in 1994 to restore democracy, one weakness of the U.S. plan was that Haitian émigrés were not properly included in strategizing. “You should be tapping into us,” he says.

The bilingual poll, conducted between Feb. 12 and Feb. 18, questioned 600 Haitian Americans in Florida and the Northeast in either English or Haitian-Creole, depending on the respondent’s preference. The poll has a margin of error of four percentage points.

Haitian Americans, the poll showed, are ambivalent about U.S. military intervention in the current crisis.

Forty-five percent of respondents said the United States should get involved militarily, and most, 32 percent, said that support should be offered to Aristide. But the remaining 13 percent said the opposition should get the military support.

The day of the poll’s release, Feb. 19, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a small military team would be dispatched to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, to assess security at the U.S. embassy. But Powell says the White House still wants a political solution and hinted the United States was open to Aristide’s resignation as a possible way out of the crisis.

Even among Haitian Americans, support for Aristide is lukewarm at best: 35 percent of respondents said that he should resign. When asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “Aristide should resign from office because he does not respect the human rights of Haitians,” 39 percent agreed, 37 percent disagreed, and 24 percent did not know or declined to answer.

One question asked respondents whether they thought the economic and political situation was better now under Aristide or under the dictatorships of Francois Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude, who ruled from the late 1950s until 1986. Fifty-six percent chose the Duvalier governments, compared to only 14 percent for Aristide.

The governments of “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” are remembered for their brutal stifling of dissent, but Bendixen says there may be “Duvalier nostalgia” because that era is now being remembered for its relative economic and political stability.

U.S. Haitians are also not happy with U.S. policy toward their country. Only nine percent say they approve of President Bush’s policy toward Haiti. And a clear majority, 61 percent, said they did not agree with the economic sanctions the United States imposed on Haiti alleging irregularities in May 2000 legislative elections.

The Haitian American community has swelled to at least 600,000 over the last few decades as successive political instability and economic woes have pushed Haitians from their homeland, a nation of 7.5 million. In 1994, U.S. troops put an exiled Aristide back in the presidency.

Now, a decade later, the U.S. military is returning to Haiti, though the plans call for only a small “security assessment team.” But neither side in the conflict is backing down, and pressure is building on the international community, particularly the United States and Haiti’s former colonizer, France, to intervene to prevent a humanitarian disaster should fighting escalate.

In the historic northern Artibonite region, the center of the late 18th century slave revolt that launched a successful independence struggle, armed rebels have taken towns and roads and are demanding Aristide’s removal. In Port-au-Prince the mainstream opposition—including Democratic Convergence, an alliance of Aristide’s political opponents—says it wants a peaceful solution but is also asking for Aristide’s resignation.

Haitian Americans, though, are skeptical about the various opposition movements and their objectives. Overall, only six percent of those polled said they supported the activities of the armed rebels, known as the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front and 17 percent said they supported the mainstream opposition groups.

Over half of Haitian Americans, 55 percent, believe that the opposition movements are just interested in power; only 22 percent said those groups are fighting for democracy.

Haitian Americans’ evaluation of Haiti’s political context is important for at least one reason: cash.

A 2000 study by Tatiana Wah of Rutgers University Department of Public Policy found that expatriates’ remittances supplement per-capita income by $32 per person in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Haiti has “no choice” she says, but to use expatriates and their skills in development efforts.

“Right now, they’re basically financing the country,” says Bendixen.

Marcelo Ballve is a PNS editor and a former Associated Press reporter and editor in the Caribbean and Brazil.

Why can the large national chain store afford to offer lower prices than the locally owned small business? Taxes are part of the answer. Small businesses pay too much in taxes, and big businesses pay too little. Why should Annie’s Family Restaurant pay a higher share of their revenue than McDonald’s?

More than 117 million people, representing 56 percent of the American labor force, work for businesses that employ less than 500 people. Small business owners face many challenges when competing with global giants. Major corporations get deeper discounts on everything from merchandise to health insurance for their employees to fees charged on credit card transactions to interest rates on borrowed money.

Why then should the federal government add to the woes of small business owners by taxing the largest businesses at rates that are in many cases less than half the rate paid by small businesses? Most small businesses are sole proprietorships and, as such, the owners pay taxes at their personal tax rate. A married small business owner whose store made between $56,800 and $114,650 in profits in 2003 would have been taxed at a 25 percent rate. A more successful small businessperson, one whose business generated more than $312,000 in profits, would pay tax at a 35 percent rate.

In contrast, the federal corporate tax rate is 35 percent, but few large corporations pay anywhere near that amount. Armies of corporate lobbyists, tax attorneys, and accountants have won new laws and mined the existing tax code for clever deductions and tax credits that have dramatically reduced the tax rate of America’s largest businesses. The nation’s corporations were estimated to pay less than15 percent of their net income in federal taxes last year, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a widely respected non-partisan research organization.

The American personal income tax is a progressive system that taxes those with the highest incomes at the highest rates. The American corporate tax system has evolved in an opposite direction, whereby smaller neighborhood businesses pay higher tax rates than giant continent-hopping multinationals. When big businesses don’t pay their fair share of taxes, small businesses that remain the economic backbone of our society suffer, putting tens of millions of jobs at risk.

As federal budget writers struggle with exploding deficits by cutting programs that serve human needs, corporate subsidies continue to grow unabated—more than $125 billion each year—$42 billion more than the federal government spent on education in 2003. These corporate handouts are not going to struggling businesses that need taxpayers’ help to survive, but rather to some of the most profitable and successful businesses in the nation: drug manufacturing, insurance, oil drilling, and commercial real estate to name a few.

In the 1980s, revelations that dozens of American businesses with billions of dollars in profits were paying no taxes at all drew public anger. In response, President Reagan in 1986 cracked down on corporate tax shelters and reduced corporate subsidies to a fraction of what they had been. A generation later, the problem has reemerged, once again weakening the competitive position of small business and starving the federal budget of much needed revenues.

Last fall, President Bush called for a reduction in the tax rate paid by small business owners to 32 percent, a small step toward a progressive corporate income tax. The President recognizes, at least in theory, that a lower corporate tax rate on small business would help balance the many other cost advantages available to larger businesses. The problem is that the President failed to address the reality that large companies would still, on average, pay corporate taxes at less than half the rate of small businesses.

Corporate tax reform, properly done, can reinvigorate America’s small businesses, restore public confidence in the fairness of the tax system, generate much needed revenues to sustain education, housing, health care and other needs upon which business and citizens depend. The largest businesses will have to pay more, but the millions of other businesses in America would end up paying a lot less.

Scott Klinger is the co-director of Responsible Wealth, a national network of affluent Americans advocating a fairer economy.

In his new book “American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush” (Viking, $25.95), historian and political commentator Kevin Phillips, a populist social critic who has decried the growing gap between rich and poor, writes a scathing assessment of the four-generation Bush dynasty that includes the forty-third President George W. Bush. Phillips follows the Bush family preoccupations with the finance industry, oil and covert operations, and the scandals they have been attached to, from Iran-Contra to Enron.

Phillips traces the rise of the Bush dynasty to George Herbert Walker and Samuel Bush, the great-grandfathers of the President. He explores the influence of the Skull and Bones Society at Yale on the Bushes, Prescott Bush’s dealings with companies in Nazi Germany after World War II began, and the families close ties with the C.I.A. Phillips advances theories on possible deceptions and lies made by Bush Sr., arguing that he was involved in the “October Surprise,” where American hostages in Iran were not released in 1980 to secure a Reagan presidential victory, and that he helped arm Saddam Hussein, up until his invasion of Kuwait. Phillips chronicles how George W. Bush evolved from an Ivy League preppie into a tob acco-chewing born-again Christian Texan, and how he may be the de facto leader of the Christian Right. Phillips also warns of what he calls the “crony capitalism” of the Bush family and other

American political dynasties.

Phillips, 63, was raised in New York City and educated at Colgate University, the University of Edinburgh and Harvard Law School. He worked on the Nixon campaign in 1968, and was an aide to Watergate conspirator John Mitchell, the U.S, Attorney General under Nixon. Phillips is the author of the 1969 classic “The Emerging Republican Majority” and “Wealth and Democracy,” as well as eight other books. He is married with three children, and lives with his wife in Connecticut and Washington D.C., where he spoke by telephone with free-lance writer Dylan Foley.

Q. How did you develop your view on the existence of a Bush family political dynasty?

A. If you’re looking at the dynasty aspect, it became clear as George W. emerged politically. The dynasty certainly started in a meaningful way with the two great-grandfathers, [industrialist] George Herbert Walker and Samuel Bush. [George W.’s grandfather] Prescott Bush was a senator from 1952 to 1962. It was clear that he thought if he had gotten started earlier, he could have been president. By the early 1960s, George W. was telling people at Andover that his father wanted to be president. You had three generations of Bushes thinking presidentially.

Q. What was your own interaction with the Bushes?

A. I met George Sr. several times. My distaste for the Bushes in a mild way goes back to the Nixon years. Nixon used George Sr. for essentially social missions. When he was ambassador to the United Nations, what he did was entertain people. He belonged to a lot of clubs. There was an element of him be ing Nixon’s ambassador to club land. He was a walking preppy watchband.

Q. What are your own politics? Were you a Nixon Republican?

A.. Yes. I worked for John Mitchell in the Nixon White House for 13 or 14 months, leaving in 1970. I was a little annoyed at the administration. When Watergate came along, it didn’t make me into an independent. I voted for Reagan twice. I became a registered independent in the 1990s.

Q. In your book, the readers get these almost contradictory images of the Bushes as poorly spoken, nonintellectual men who are also Machiavellian schemers. How do you reconcile this?

A. The bumbling is certainly there. You have to go back to the Yale Skull and Bones and the O.S.S., the World War II intelligence agency. There was this whole id ea of the gentleman amateur, where serious clandestine activities were threaded through with comic book stuff. They also have some physical aspect, where they speed up and have short attention spans. It makes for an odd character. The family has been involved in clandestine things since the great-grandfathers in World War I. They have been involved with things they want to keep secret or blurred.

Q. How do you see George W.’s relationship with the Religious Right?

A. I don’t doubt the sincerity of G.W.’s born-again experience. He does have a decisive side, that he believes that he has been chosen by god for this leadership role. He was clearly telling people in 2000 that god wanted him to run for the Presidency, and god was speaking to him. In 2000, whe n Pat Robertson stepped down as head of the Christian Coalition, a Washington Post reporter was calling around to get reactions from people on the religious right, as to who would succeed Robertson. The reaction was that the Religious Right had a leader and it was George W., based on his personal religiosity and his view on being

chosen by god.

Q. Why do you argue that the Bush family has a pattern of using deception and secrecy?

A. In the last 25 years, the deception has taken its form from George Sr.’s time heading the C.I.A. in 1976. He was spending time on Saudi Arabia and Iran, and it is pretty likely at this time that he got knowledgeable about B.C.C.I. [the arms and banking scandal]. He was involved in one scandal after another—there was the Oct ober Surprise and Iran-Contra. I pretty much believe the circumstantial evidence on the October Surprise is meaningful.

Q. Do you think that the Iraq War could make or break George W.?

A. It probably would be a just result if he was made or broken by wh at happens in Iraq. George Bush Sr. was involved in building up Iraq in a major way, up until 1990. As Act II rolled around in 2002, the Democrats should have been primed to discuss Bush Sr. building up Iraq. They didn’t seem to grasp any of it.

Q. Do you see a problem with political dynasties in America?

A. You obviously have “great family” politics in America. The Kennedys made their last run for the White House in 1980. With the Clintons, you have the obvious standard bearer in Hillary. If we’ve got dynastic succession, we’ve got this fundamental problem of hereditary politics undercutting democratic traditions with a small “d” and republican traditions with a small “r”. The solution has to be to put some focus on it.

At the front door of a modest bungalow in the Richmond flatlands, a robust young man greets me warmly. His name is Jesse Graham, and his mother, local author and resident Meredith Maran, has recently published a non-fiction book entitled Dirty, A Search for Answers Inside America’s Teenage Drug Epidemic. In Dirty, Maran follows the daily struggles of three teenage drug users as they navigate through high school, the juvenile justice system, and various recovery programs. Interspersed throughout the book are glimpses of Jesse’s own turbulent teen years and Maran’s fight to keep her son safe, in school and out of jail.

Jesse guides me to a comfortable couch in a living room that is, I note, remarkably well kept for a young bachelor.

I ask Jesse about his difficult high school years. “I didn’t have an extreme addiction,” says Jesse, “but I was addicted to weed and alcohol. I started partying at 13, got in trouble with the police often (Maran notes in her book that Jesse was arrested nineteen times for inc reasingly violent crimes between the ages of 13 and 20). I finally reached a turning point in 1996 when I was a sophomore at Berkeley High School. I loved basketball and my coach invited the team members to come with him to his church, Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist on Eighth Street in Berkeley. At first, I had to get used to it. It was a long time for me to sit still and I didn’t have much of an attention span. But about the third visit something clicked. I didn’t stop using right away. I continued to go to Berkeley High for a while, then I transferred to Oakland Tech, and I finally got a diploma through an independent study program. It took me five years to get outta high school. I was 19 when I finally gave up drugs for good.”

One of the issues that Mara n explores painstakingly in Dirty is her relationship with her children. Besides Jesse, there is Peter, a photographer and 2003 graduate of UC, Berkeley. Maran wonders why Peter glided easily through adolescence, doing well at school and at home while Jes se, only 18 months Peter’s junior, “…rarely went a week without a heart stopping drama. Sleepless nights blurred into bad-news days; brief interludes of ‘normal life’ were shattered by phone calls summoning me and my ex-husband to principal’s offices, pol ice stations, emergency rooms, jails.”

I ask Jesse what he thinks fueled his drug and alcohol use. “I was three when my parents split,” says Jesse. “It caused a lot of pain. When I got older, I started hanging out with the wrong people. I felt like I wa s losing a wrestling match with my emotions and I repeatedly made bad decisions.”

I look at Jesse’s arms and legs. They are covered in tattoos. “Tell me about those,” I say, pointing to his calves and shoulders.

He laughs. “This one is of a panther,” h e says. “I got it when I was 16. And this one is of a hand holding a cross and two crying eyes are looking through it. It reads ‘So Many Tears.’ This one over here is of an angel and the devil.”

“Wow,” I say. “You got these after you cleaned up, uh?”

“N o,” says Jesse. “I drew all of these myself and got them before I stopped using and found the church.”

Now a sophomore studying sociology at Diablo Community College, Jesse hopes to make a difference in other people’s lives by working in a non-profit, co mmunity setting. And he already has. He was employed for two and half years as a child caseworker at Walden House, a court mandated, residential adolescent drug treatment program in San Francisco. “I was successful there,” says Jesse, “because I’m young a nd I’ve been where the clients have been.”

“What about the kids your mom follows in Dirty? What do you think of their chances for success?”

Jesse pauses for a moment. “I think it will be predicated by their family situation and social environment. It al l depends on what they come back home to. I was lucky. I had a mom and dad who stayed with me throughout my problems. I had their friends, my brother and my basketball coach. And now I’ve got my faith, my own community, my church.”

“What advice do you ha ve for the kids and their parents who are going through what you and your family went through?”

“I’d tell kids to recognize their own value. The value that you put on yourself dictates how you treat other people. The kids in my mother’s book don’t have the worst of parents but they and everyone else need to learn how precious they are. My advice to parents is to have a support system for themselves so that they can get help. My mother would be a good person to go to for advice because she’s already been through it. In part, that’s what her book is all about.”

I look around the room trying to think if there is anything else I should ask Jesse before I leave. My eyes settle on a bubbling fish tank. “Hey,” I say. “Why don’t you have any fish in that tank?”

Jesse smiles. “It takes a lot of work to take care of fish. You have to get the water and the temperature just right. They need just the right environment and attention to grow healthy and strong.”

“Amen,” I say.

“You got that right,” answers Jesse.

Dirty, A Search for Answers Inside America’s Teenage Drug Epidemic, published by HarperSanFrancisco ($24.95, 320 pages) is available at local bookstores. For more information, visit www.meredithmaran.com.

All too often these days, regret is publicly expressed about historic buildings or urban blocks that used to lend charm and character to their cities but have been needlessly demolished, often replaced by impersonal structures that contribute little to local atmosphere and identity.

Berkeley’s Southside is such a place. This is where the college town began in 1866 with the College Homestead Association Tract subdivision. Little remains on the streets to link us with those earlier times. Since the 1950s, entire blocks of fine old Southside buildings have been demolished wholesale and replaced by institutional structures or by mediocre box constructions, trailing in their wake urban blight and degradation.

As a result of the gutting and blighting of the Southside, Berkeley's citizens organized in the 1970s to enact the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance and the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. During the same decade, the State Office of Historic Preservation gave a grant to the City of Berkeley to undertake a survey for the State Historic Resources Inventory.

One of the Berkeley buildings listed in the inventory is the Ellen Blood House, built in 1891, by the architect Robert Gray Frise, on the 2500 block of Durant Avenue. On the Inventory form, it is recognized as “...a particularly striking and sole holdover on that block from the 19th Century. Set in the middle of a spacious garden with California live oaks and loquats, [it] is a pleasant contrast to the surrounding buildings and gives a sense of history to the neighborhood.”

In 1999, a cluster of historic buildings on Durant Avenue and Channing Way were designated City of Berkeley Landmarks. Among them, the Blood House was designated as a Structure-of-Merit (unaminously upheld by the city council), cited as “a major contributing building to the early historic architectural and urban character of the Southside, particularly on a block that historically has been residential.”

Most passers-by probably do not notice the old Blood House because it is now surrounded by an asphalt parking lot (rose garden and live oak demolished circa 1988), and its exterior is dulled from neglect. In its day, however, it was a prominent Queen Anne that stood among other stately homes built on garden “villa” lots lining the streets of the Southside.

Ellen (Mrs. Stillman) Blood, who migrated West with her husband in the 1860s, ultimately to farm on land in Tulare County, raised six children and later came to Berkeley as a woman of means to reside on Durant Avenue while her children attended the university. In 1907, the Blood House changed hands when Perry Tompkins, the partner of Berkeley’s celebrated developer Duncan McDuffie, bought the property. He most likely stuccoed and altered the house in the 1920s to suggest the popular Period Revival style.

By 1930, Durant Avenue and the Southside had evolved from the little village of Victorians and country gardens to a busy urban townscape with electric street cars, new buildings of brick and stucco in the style of the City Beautiful Movement, and a cosmopolitan vitality. Handsome commercial buildings were built along Telegraph Avenue, and fine apartment houses were added to the surrounding streets. The Tompkins were not the only “Blue Book” residents to live on Durant Avenue in those days. Senator William Knowles resided across the street in a grand Colonial Revival house (demolished in 1970), Aurelia Reinhardt, president of Mills College, lived down the street, and John Galen Howard lived in an apartment up the street.

Durant Avenue also had clubs, churches, and even a hotel. Next to the Blood House, The Brasfield, now the Beau Sky Hotel (Shea and Lofquist, 1910, Berkeley City Landmark) was one of the first boarding houses for female students. Two doors down there was a traditional brick church (demolished in 1969), designed by James Plachek and built with funds from Lizzie Glide of Glide Memorial Church fame.

Beyond, there was the classically proportioned Campus Theater, which later became the first location of Tower Records. Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., the notable Berkeley architect who often partnered with Duncan McDuffie and Perry Tompkins, designed the Campus Theater in 1911. He also designed the two-story Italian villa-style apartment building called The Albra (1921, Berkeley Structure of Merit) on the other side of the Blood House. It is now hidden by shops that house Top Dog and La Burrita.

Well-preserved historic resources are essential to a proud and vital city. They are widely recognized as a way to stimulate economic activity. All agree that at the moment the Blood House is not a showcase but, a prominent residence in the 1890s, it retains an undiminished character that has the potential to contribute significantly to the memorable historical fabric still existing on Durant Avenue. Its villa lot invites an enhancing infill. Appropriately restored and adapted, the Blood House could be incorporated into a stunning new project. That’s why, in August 2003, the Landmarks Preservation Commission denied demolition and requested that a viable alternative development be sought to creatively re-use this historic structure.

Too much traditional architecture seems expendable before the forces of “progress." Regret sets in only decades later, when it's too late to do anything about it.

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) will decide on Feb. 26 whether to demolish the 1891 Ellen Blood House at 2526 Durant Ave., a City Structure of Merit, to make way for a new project.

The property owner, Ruegg & Ellsworth, did not work with the community or advance any good-faith plans that maintain the historic house, claiming that it was impossible to make a profit on the site with the house on it. However, alternative proposals by local architect Mark Gillem contradict that assertion. And under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the house should be preserved if a viable alternative exists to save it. But even if such an alternative did not exist, ZAB would still have to find an “overriding” reason to destroy the house—in this case, that the city so desperately needs the project’s 44 units of housing that it should throw a historic resource under the bulldozers.

ZAB is not empowered to substitute its own judgment for that of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, an expert body; only the city council can do that. And under CEQA, there is no distinction between landmarks and structures of merit, because CEQA allows each community to preserve its history in its own desired way. Some resources might be valued for their extraordinary beauty, some as vernacular examples, yet others because they provide a supportive context for community values. All are equal under CEQA. The judgment of historic value is not within the purview or expertise of ZAB.

Not counting this project, housing for about 1,500 new residents is under way or completed in Berkeley’s Southside. Like this project, most of these are cookie-cutter student units. Not so the Blood House, a unique, 3,000-square-foot, homey old building of the kind most Berkeleyans love. But are there happy students living there now? Oh no! The Blood House is now illegally being used for offices, feeding institutional creep and reducing the housing supply. For 17 years, Ruegg/Ellsworth has avoided using the Blood House for its only legal purpose: rent-controlled housing.

Nothing unusual here: David Ruegg and Robert Ellsworth and their business successors (through several companies including Ruegg & Ellsworth and Rue-Ell Enterprises, all simplified here as Ruegg/Ellsworth), have dominated Southside development for four decades, and not to the good.

In 1968 they bought the neo-classical 1923 Masonic Clubhouse at 2590 Bancroft Way, demolished it, and gave us the blank-faced baby-box retail complex that now houses Urban Outfitters and a parking garage. In 1969 they bought 2518 Durant Ave., demolished a unique 1924 Gothic-style church and replaced it with the Tower Records bunker mall. In 1966 Rue-Ell bought the stately 1921 Albra Apartments at 2532 Durant Ave. Immediately they asked permission to add an “office addition” to the front. Since an office seemed quiet and non-damaging to the building residents, the city granted permission. Within months, the office had been converted into a fast-food restaurant (Top Dog), a vibrant red goiter strangling the formerly elegant Albra entrance. Good food; bad building.

And what happened to the inside of the Albra? Eight spacious, multi-room units with basement and garage space were gradually converted to office use. Students moving into the characterless rabbit warrens being built today have lost many an opportunity to live in the spacious, hardwood-floored, high-ceilinged units that have disappeared under the watch of Ruegg/Ellsworth.

Ruegg/Ellsworth also owns other properties around Southside, including the formica feedlot at 2521 Durant Ave., formerly inhabited by an elegant 1901 mansion that housed first a senator and later 30 students. This and other no-longer-historic Southside Ruegg/Ellsworth properties are underutilized by today’s standards and are good alternative sites for new large, multi-story, mixed-use developments that can accommodate the housing we need on Southside.

Under the Southside Plan (SSP), the 2500 block of Durant Avenue should become a showcase for mixed-use, high-density, car-free living. Both current zoning and the SSP encourage car-free development in this location, and Durant Avenue will remain the most pedestrian-oriented stretch of Southside. We owe ourselves and thousands of future residents and visitors a unique, pleasant, and interesting street.

What makes such a street? Architecture displaying an interesting variety of size, shape, and style spanning a century, which still exists on Durant Avenue, is a very good place to start. In recognition of this, the SSP calls specifically for preserving historic buildings on Southside.

Thanks to the hard work of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Southside historical assets have been “creatively re-used” in three recent projects: Westminster House on at 2700 Bancroft Way, where a cozy Cambridge-styled courtyard complex was formed; the First Presbyterian Church project, where an early brown-shingle school will be relocated in an original new site plan; and the Edwards House project at 2530 Dwight Way, where an 1886 house was gracefully incorporated into a project that looks like home but houses more people than the apartments next door.

These efforts demonstrate what is possible when a developer works with the community to maximize Berkeley’s potential. In contrast, the current Blood House proposal shows a disgraceful lack of will and poverty of imagination.

Durant now has an opportunity for truly exciting development. Ruegg/Ellsworth owns the Blood House site and both adjoining properties, making three sites in a row with historic assets. As part of a comprehensive plan, the Blood House would remain where it protects the landmark next door, the Beau Sky. Top Dog could be relocated to reveal the Albra Apartments. The ugly and underutilized parking areas behind all three buildings could be joined to create interesting living spaces. If Ruegg/Ellsworth is not up to the task, it is better to leave the lot alone and wait for a developer with vision than to lose our history and our potential.

The Ruegg/Ellsworth plan destroys the Blood House and packs the site with a huge block of rabbit warrens. The location, small size, and no-frills design of the units is aimed only at students, and yet the applicant insists that the building is for long-term residents who will need 18 parking spaces. Nobody believes this. The parking spaces currently on the site have been illegally rented to the Beau Sky Hotel for many years, which is ironic since under Rue-Ell ownership, a perfectly good rooming house was converted to the hotel on the claim that the hotel would require no parking. Why, we could house 45 people simply by converting it back again! In any case, one might assume that illegal use of the proposed parking by others would continue apace.

Another architect, Mark Gillem, has submitted alternative plans for the site that achieve 38 to 40 units of housing, provide equivalent profitability, and save the Blood House. Slightly smaller than the Ruegg & Ellsworth plan, they also reduce the mass and shadow impacts on the street and surrounding buildings. How is this apparent miracle achieved? By removing the parking spaces that are unnecessary for the users of the new building, are not required under current zoning, and contradict the goals of the Southside Plan. So ZAB will have to decide whether (1) to uphold local planning goals and preserve an irreplaceable part of Berkeley’s culture, or (2) to give a questionable parking lot to a property owner that has already laid waste to so many historic buildings, undermined our housing stock, and used the site illegally for decades. I hope they can figure out what to do.

It’s happened every one of the 30 Februarys that I’ve lived here: The first flowering plums bloom in my neighborhood, and I remember why I endure gray, muddy winter. There are a few days of teasing, when the plum behind the recycling yard starts to show white, and then a few more scattered trees join it, and almost immediately the pink plums add their note, almost too sweet. The one that reaches over the back fence starts scenting up the yard and dropping petals over the car, so when I back out and take off down the street I leave a merry trail of mud from the tires and confetti petals from the roof, the hood, the windows. Even on a gloomy day it’s weirdly, bridally festive.

Flowering plums belong to the same genus, Prunus, as all the other plums and cherries and peaches and nectarines and apricots and (surprise) almonds we eat. The genus includes things that just flower, and things that barely do that, like English laurel. The two species most seen in Berkeley streets and gardens are various cultivars of P. cerasifera, and Prunus blireiana, a hybrid that bears little or no fruit. Flower color is barely a clue, as P. cerasifera comes in pink and white forms; P. blireiana is the one with the lumpy trunk.

They’re not natives, but do seem to adapt well. In spring you’ll see a few in the parks or semi-wild lands around here, looking oddly off-color in an otherwise muted palette. They don’t seem to be very invasive, so far. Birds eat the fruit (and so do we; even the bland yellow ones make good plum sauce) and the flowers, too. Watch for a flock of finches in a blooming tree; they’ll nibble the sweet base of each petal they pluck, and drop the rest—more celebratory confetti. They’re feeling Spring too, gathering in flocks to migrate or song-jostling each other for breeding territories here.

Flowering plums are small and generally not disruptive to sidewalks, as trees go, which is one reason they’re here. They sometimes need to lose long straight watersprouts or crossing branches, but they’re annoying to work on because the little aborted twigs in the center dwindle into sharp spikes. Still, if you wait until Spring to prune your prune, you get bonus flowers to bring indoors.

Shortly after their glorious full chorus, plums give us a slightly melancholy i nterlude. Big rainstorms knock all those petals off the twigs, leaving an odd balding bristle of stamens and pistils, and then (even in drought years) the leaves start to push through, crowding and obscuring the flowers we’ve barely had time to enjoy. Fro st was right: The early leaf is indeed a flower, to the eye at least. That dark red or pale green halo is quick to coarsen into merely pleasant leaves, a signal to get the business of growth underway.

Flowering plums are scattered all over Berkeley, and there’s a particularly good stretch of them on Carleton Street from just west of Telegraph Avenue to a few blocks west of Sacramento Street.

Opinion

Editorials

How to vote in the primary on Tuesday? Here’s a simple algorithm: If Kerry is way ahead, vote for Kucinich, because In Your Heart You Know He’s Right. (If you’re under 50, that was Barry Goldwater’s old slogan, and it worked for him. Well, not exactly. If you’re under 30, it’s too hard to explain who Goldwater was.)

If Kerry and Edwards are closer (plus or minus eight percentage points apart), vote for Edwards, so that Kerry will be forced to listen to Edwards’ message on NAFTA. If you’re a Green, next time remember to switch to the Democratic Party in time to vote in the primary. You can always switch back later. Then again, if the Greens can’t do any better than Nader, why bother? (If you’re a Republican, move to Danville if you can afford it, and if you can’t afford it you really ought to be a Democrat.)

And then there are the Berkeley ballot measures. Do you want to keep the wrong people off the ballot? Vote for Measure J, and at least you’ll exclude the ones who can’t afford to pay $150 to file. That might not be all of the wrong people, of course….

Want to save the city a hundred thousand bucks or so from time to time? Vote for Measure H, and there will be fewer runoffs. It’s great for incumbents, since incumbents almost never get less than 40 percent. Makes it harder to be a challenger, though.

Another potential cash-saver is Instant Runoff Voting, supported by John Anderson, the former Republican congressman who tried to run for president as an independent in 1980. (When I was canvassing precincts for Democrats in my youth, I learned that “independents” were people who often didn’t vote and seldom knew what was going on. They mostly disapproved of politics and elections.) His national organization is the major funder ($6,500) of the pro-Measure I campaign.

Here in Berkeley, Measure I seems to me to add up to a pro-incumbent Move to the Independent Middle (acronym MIM), though the list of its contributors is all over the map. Many progressives, especially Greens, believe it will make the world safe for progress. Many moderates believe the reverse. Could be they’re both wrong. The devil is always in the details, and one problem with Measure I is that it leaves the details up to the incumbent councilpersons.

If all three Berkeley measures pass, we might just count on electing Councilpersons-for-Life. We might even be able to do away with elections altogether and really save money.

Speaking of homogenization, by the way, a Social Note from All Over: sometime Progressive Mayor Tom Bates, the proud owner of an $85,000 campaign debt from the mayoral election, was the beneficiary of a High-Hills fundraiser last weekend. The hosts were stalwarts of The Faction Formerly Known as Moderate: Miriam Hawley, Harry Weininger, Maggy Gee, Gordon Wozniak and Fred Collignon, Mr. and Ms. Nice Guys all. (The guest/contributor list was not released to the press.)

Have they changed stripes, or has Tom? Or perhaps none of them have…. It’s a new Era of Good Feeling, with Mayor Tom enacting the role of President Monroe, who was elected with all but one vote in the Electoral College.

Which is why cynical curmudgeons like me will be tempted to vote no on All Of The Above.

Even on the Bailout Bonds, Props. 57 and 58? The Schwarzenegger proposal is for the citizens to borrow about $430 per person this year, and even more next year. If the vehicle tax (a progressive tax under which those who can afford more pay more) were reinstated, the net shortfall would be $300 per person. We’d pay back $500 per person for that $300.

Why not just raise taxes now, progressively more on those who can afford it, and save money in the long run? The best thing about this plan is that it doesn’t rescue Arnie, so we might be able to get rid of him in the next election.

Because it’s the prudent solution, it’s unlikely to be adopted by the idiots in the Legislature. The poor will suffer while they’re arguing about it. Catch 22. But if Prop. 56 passes, they might do better. You have until 8 p.m. Tuesday night to make up your mind, and I can’t help you.

Under fire from a loose coalition of citizens, city commissioners, and councilmembers, Mayor Tom Bates presented a newly toothless version of his control-of-City-Commission-items proposal to the City Council Agenda Committee last week. Since the proposal seems to rise like Dracula from its grave every few weeks, it remains to be seen whether this will be the final stake to the heart.

In a report on recommended revisions to the city council’s rules of procedures, Bates asked that the Agenda Committee be given the authority “to move commission items between the Consent and Action calendar” on the city council’s weekly agenda. The effect of moving an item in such a manner means that rather than being passed with the rest of the consent items en masse and without discussion, the item would receive discussion and separate vote. Since the mayor or any individual councilmember now has the ability to move an item from “Consent” to “Action,” giving them exactly the same power as members of the Agenda Committee hardly seems worth the effort.

Agenda Committee members have always insisted that the commission proposal never amounted to anything more than delaying commission-generated items for one week “for scheduling purposes.” Last November, councilmember and Agenda Committee member Linda Maio told the Daily Planet “I don’t think anyone [on the Agenda Committee] has any plans—I certainly don’t—to hold any reports back from the council.”

But some citizens had voiced suspicions that the real purpose of the proposal was to censor, alter, or indefinitely delay controversial commission items. Those suspicions got new life when a Feb. 9 memo from City Clerk Sherry Kelly to the Agenda Committee concerning proposed changes in council rules included a recommendation that the council “[c]onsider revising the exception that commission items are not subject to review by the Agenda Committee and give authority to the Agenda Committee to schedule commission reports on an appropriate agenda and if necessary, to request additional information from the commission or staff before placing the matter before the council.”

Professing confusion over how the commission proposal ended up being written that way, Bates asked for the matter to be put over, telling Agenda Committee members at the Feb. 9 meeting that “the only discretion I was looking for was to put off commission reports for one week only.”

But when the proposal came back to the Agenda Committee at last week’s meeting, even the week’s delay portion had been removed from the mayor’s recommendations.

In another city council reorganization proposal, Bates is asking that public comment be set at 30 minutes for regular council meetings and 20 minutes for subcommittee meetings, with each speaker limited to two minutes each. Speakers at such meetings are currently allotted three minutes. Bates said that limiting the time for each speaker would allow for more voices to be heard.

Once the Agenda Committee votes on the proposals, the full city council will have final approval over any recommended changes.›